"
"Speak not thus, madam, before your faithful servants," said
Catherine, "to discourage their zeal at once, and to break their
hearts. Daughter of Kings, be not in this hour so unkingly--Come,
Roland, and let us, the youngest of her followers, show ourselves
worthy of her cause--let us kneel before her footstool, and implore
her to be her own magnanimous self." And leading Roland Graeme to the
Queen's seat, they both kneeled down before her. Mary raised herself
in her chair, and sat erect, while, extending one hand to be kissed by
the page, she arranged with the other the clustering locks which
shaded the bold yet lovely brow of the high-spirited Catherine.
"Alas! _ma mign?ne_," she said, for so in fondness she often
called her young attendant, "that you should thus desperately mix with
my unhappy fate the fortune of your young lives!--Are they not a
lovely couple, my Fleming? and is it not heart-rending to think that I
must be their ruin?"
"Not so," said Roland Graeme, "it is we, gracious Sovereign, who will
be your deliverers."
"_Ex oribus parvulorum!_" said the Queen, looking upward; "if it
is by the mouth of these children that Heaven calls me to resume the
stately thoughts which become my birth and my rights, thou wilt grant
them thy protection, and to me the power of rewarding their
zeal!"--Then turning to Fleming, she instantly added,--"Thou knowest,
my friend, whether to make those who have served me happy, was not
ever Mary's favourite pastime.
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