“‘Now, on Robert Gra’am, The king’s destroyer, shame! To Robert Graham cling Shame, who destroyed our king.'”

“Mary,” cried the queen, who had overheard this altercation from her bedroom,—”Mary, I command you to open the door directly: do 杭州足浴女技师图片 you hear?”

Mary obeyed, and Lord Lindsay entered, followed by Melville, who walked behind him, with slow steps and bent head. Arrived in the middle of the second room, Lord Lindsay stopped, and, looking round him—

“Well, where is she, then?” he asked; “and has she not already kept us waiting long enough outside, without making us wait again inside? Or does she imagine that, despite these walls and these bars, she is always queen?”

“Patience, my lord,” murmured Sir Robert: “you see that Lord Ruthven has not come yet, and since we can do nothing without him, let us wait.”

“Let wait who will,” replied Lindsay, inflamed with anger; “but it will not be I, and wherever she may be, I shall go and seek her.”

With these words, he made some steps towards Mary Stuart’s bedroom; but at the same moment the queen opened the door, 杭州洗浴小姐without seeming moved either at the visit or at the insolence of the visitors, and so lovely and so full of majesty, that each, even Lindsay himself, was silent at her appearance, and, as if in obedience to a higher power, bowed respectfully before her.

“I fear I have kept you waiting, my lord,” said the queen, without replying to the ambassador’s salutation otherwise than by a slight inclination of the head; “but a woman does not like to receive even enemies without having spent a few minutes over her toilet. It is true that men are less tenacious of ceremony,” added she, throwing a significant glance at Lord Lindsay’s rusty armour and soiled and pierced doublet. “Good day, Melville,” she continued, without paying attention to some words of excuse stammered by Lindsay; “be welcome in my prison, as you were in my palace; for 杭州桑拿会所体验网 I believe you as devoted to the one as to the other”.

Then, turning to Lindsay, who was looking interrogatively at the door, impatient as he was for Ruthven to come—

“You have there, my lord,” said she, pointing to the sword he carried over his shoulder, “a faithful companion, though it is a little heavy: did you expect, in coming here, to find enemies against whom to employ it? In the contrary case, it is a strange ornament for a lady’s presence. But no matter, my lord, I, am too much of a Stuart to fear the sight of a sword, even if it were naked, I warn you.”

“It is not out of place here, madam,” replied Lindsay, bringing it forward and leaning his elbow on its cross hilt, “for it is an old acquaintance of your family.”

“Your ancestors, my lord, were brave and loyal enough for me not to refuse to believe what you tell 杭州养生按摩会所 me. Besides, such a good blade must have rendered them good service.”

“Yes, madam, yes, surely it has done so, but that kind of service that kings do not forgive. He for whom it was made was Archibald Bell-the-Cat, and he girded himself with it the day when, to

justify his name, he went to seize in the very tent of King James III, your grandfather, his un worthy favourites, Cochran, Hummel, Leonard, and Torpichen, whom he hanged on Louder Bridge with the halters of his soldiers’ horses. It was also with this sword that he slew at one blow, in the lists, Spens of Kilspindie, who had insulted him in the presence of King James IV, counting on the protection his master accorded him, and which did not guard him against it any more than his shield, which it split in two. At his master’s death, which took place two years after the 杭州江干区足浴店可啪 defeat of Flodden, on whose battlefield he left his two sons and two hundred warriors of the name of Douglas, it passed into the hands of the Earl of Angus, who drew it from the scabbard when he drove the Hamiltons out of Edinburgh, and that so quickly and

completely that the affair was called the ‘sweeping of the streets.’ Finally, your father James V saw it glisten in the fight of the bridge over the Tweed, when Buccleuch, stirred up by him, wanted to snatch him from the guardianship of the Douglases, and when eighty warriors of the name of Scott remained on 杭州小丫头足浴正规吗 the battlefield.”

“But,” said the queen, “how is it that this weapon, after such exploits, has not remained as a trophy in the Douglas family? No doubt the Earl of Angus required a great occasion to decide him to-renounce in your favour this modern Excalibur”. [History 杭州spa按摩师 of Scotland, by Sir Walter Scott.—”The Abbott”: historical part.]

“Yes, no doubt, madam, it was upon a great occasion,” replied Lindsay, in spite of the imploring signs made by Melville, “and this will have at least the advantage of the others, in being sufficiently recent for you to remember. It was ten days ago, on the battlefield of Carberry Hill, madam, when the infamous Bothwell had the audacity to make a public challenge in which he defied to single combat whomsoever would dare to maintain that he was not innocent of the murder of the king your husband.杭州丝袜花 I made him answer then, I the third, that he was an assassin. And as he refused to fight with the two others under the pretext that they were only barons, I presented myself in my turn, I who am earl and lord. It was on that occasion that the noble Earl of Morton gave me this good sword to fight him to the death. So that, if he had been a little more presumptuous or a little less cowardly, dogs and vultures would be eating at this moment the pieces that, with the help of this good sword, I should have carved for them from that traitor’s carcass.”

At these words, Mary Seyton and Robert Melville looked at each other in terror, for the events that they recalled were so recent that they were, so to speak, still living in the queen’s heart; but the queen, with incredible impassibility and a smile of contempt on her lips—

“It 杭州桑拿按摩36式 is easy, my lord,” said she, “to vanquish an enemy who does not appear in the lists; however, believe me, if Mary had inherited the Stuarts’ sword as she has inherited their sceptre, your sword, long as it is, would yet have seemed to you too short. But as you have only to relate to us now, my lord, what you intended doing, and not what you have done, think it fit that I bring you back to something of more reality; for I do not suppose you have given yourself the trouble to come here purely and simply to add a chapter to the little treatise Des Rodomontades Espagnolles by M. de Brantome.”