"By Heaven,
Catherine, you are all riddles alike!"
"You are as great a fool as Fleming," returned the impatient maiden;
"know ye not, that on the night of Henry Darnley's murder, and at the
blowing up of the Kirk of Field, the Queen's absence was owing to her
attending on a masque at Holyrood, given by her to grace the marriage
of this same Sebastian, who, himself a favoured servant, married one
of her female attendants, who was near to her person?"
"By Saint Giles," said the page, "I wonder not at her passion, but
only marvel by what forgetfulness it was that she could urge the Lady
Fleming with such a question."
"I cannot account for it," said Catherine; "but it seems as if great
and violent grief and horror sometimes obscure the memory, and spread
a cloud like that of an exploding cannon, over the circumstances with
which they are accompanied. But I may not stay here, where I came not
to moralize with your wisdom, but simply to cool my resentment against
that unwise Lady Fleming, which I think hath now somewhat abated, so
that I shall endure her presence without any desire to damage either
her curch or vasquine. Meanwhile, keep fast that door--I would not
for my life that any of these heretics saw her in the unhappy state,
which, brought on her as it has been by the success of their own
diabolical plottings, they would not stick to call, in their snuffling
cant, the judgment of Providence."
She left the apartment just as the latch of the outward door was
raised from without.
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