"Their number is very few, I believe," answered Roland, "and their sorrow, if they feel any, not deeper than ten minutes' time will cure."
"They are more numerous, and think more deeply concerning you, than you seem to be aware," answered Catherine. "But perhaps they think wrong--You are the best judge in your own affairs; and if you prefer gold and church-lands to honour and loyalty, and the faith of your fathers, why should you be hampered in conscience more than others?"
"May Heaven bear witness for me," said Roland, "that if I entertain any difference of opinion--that is, if I nourish any doubts in point of religion, they have been adopted on the conviction of my own mind, and the suggestion of my own conscience!"
"Ay, ay, your conscience--your conscience!" repeated she with satiric emphasis; "your conscience is the scape-goat; I warrant it an able one--it will bear the burden of one of the best manors of the Abbey of Saint Mary of Kennaquhair", lately forfeited to our noble Lord the King, by the Abbot and community thereof, for the high crime of fidelity to their religious vows, and now to be granted by the High and Mighty Traitor, and so forth, James Earl of Murray, to the good squire of dames Roland Graeme, for his loyal and faithful service as under-espial, and deputy-turnkey, for securing the person of his lawful sovereign, Queen Mary."
"You misconstrue me cruelly," said the page; "yes, Catherine, most cruelly--God knows I would protect this poor lady at the risk of my life, or with my life; but what can I do--what can any one do for her?"
"Much may be done--enough may be done--all may be done--if men will be but true and honourable, as Scottish men were in the days of Bruce and Wallace. Oh, Roland, from what an enterprise you are now withdrawing your heart and hand, through mere fickleness and coldness of spirit!"
"How can I withdraw," said Roland, "from an enterprise which has never been communicated to me?--Has the Queen, or have you, or has any one, communicated with me upon any thing for her service which I have refused? Or have you not, all of you, held me at such distance from your counsels, as if I were the most faithless spy since the days of Ganelon?" [Footnote: Gan, Gano, or Ganelon of Mayence, is in the Romances on the subject of Charlemagne and his Paladins, always represented as the traitor by whom the Christian champions are betrayed.]
"And who," said Catherine Seyton, "would trust the sworn friend, and pupil, and companion, of the heretic preacher Henderson? ay--a proper tutor you have chosen, instead of the excellent Ambrosius, who is now turned out of house and homestead, if indeed he is not languishing in a dungeon, for withstanding the tyranny of Morton, to whose brother the temporalities of that noble house of God have been gifted away by the Regent."
"Is it possible?" said the page; "and is the excellent Father Ambrose in such distress?"
"He would account the news of your falling away from the faith of your fathers," answered Catherine, "a worse mishap than aught that tyranny can inflict on himself."
"But why," said Roland, very much moved, "why should you suppose that--that--that it is with me as you say?"
"Do you yourself deny it?" replied Catherine; "do you not admit that you have drunk the poison which you should have dashed from your lips? --Do you deny that it now ferments in your veins, if it has not altogether corrupted the springs of life?--Do you deny that you have your doubts, as you proudly term them, respecting what popes and councils have declared it unlawful to doubt of?--Is not your faith wavering, if not overthrown?--Does not the heretic preacher boast his conquest?--Does not the heretic woman of this prison-house hold up thy example to others?--Do not the Queen and the Lady Fleming believe in thy falling away?--And is there any except one--yes, I will speak it out, and think as lightly as you please of my good-will--is there one except myself that holds even a lingering hope that you may yet prove what we once all believed of you?"
"I know not," said our poor page, much embarrassed by the view which was thus presented to him of the conduct he was expected to pursue, and by a person in whom he was not the less interested that, though long a resident in Lochleven Castle, with no object so likely to attract his undivided attention, no lengthened interview had taken place since they had first met,--"I know not what you expect of me, or fear from me. I was sent hither to attend Queen Mary, and to her I acknowledge the duty of a servant through life and death. If any one had expected service of another kind, I was not the party to render it. I neither avow nor disclaim the doctrines of the reformed church.--Will you have the truth?--It seems to me that the profligacy of the Catholic clergy has brought this judgment on their own heads, and, for aught I know, it may be for their reformation. But, for betraying this unhappy Queen, God knows I am guiltless of the thought. Did I even believe worse of her, than as her servant I wish--as her subject I dare to do--I would not betray her--far from it--I would aid her in aught which could tend to a fair trial of her cause."
"Enough! enough!" answered Catherine, clasping her hands together; "then thou wilt not desert us if any means are presented, by which, placing our Royal Mistress at freedom, this case may be honestly tried betwixt her and her rebellious subjects?"
"Nay--but, fair Catherine," replied the page, "hear but what the Lord of Murray said when he sent me hither."--
"Hear but what the devil said," replied the maiden, "rather than what a false subject, a false brother, a false counsellor, a false friend, said! A man raised from a petty pensioner on the crown's bounty, to be the counsellor of majesty, and the prime distributor of the bounties of the state;--one with whom rank, fortune, title, consequence, and power, all grew up like a mushroom, by the mere warm good-will of the sister, whom, in requital, he hath mewed up in this place of melancholy seclusion--whom, in farther requital, he has deposed, and whom, if he dared, he would murder!"
"I think not so ill of the Earl of Murray," said Roland Graeme; "and sooth to speak," he added, with a smile, "it would require some bribe to make me embrace, with firm and desperate resolution, either one side or the other."
"Nay, if that is all," replied Catherine Seyton, in a tone of enthusiasm, "you shall be guerdoned with prayers from oppressed subjects--from dispossessed clergy--from insulted nobles--with immortal praise by future ages--with eager gratitude by the present--with fame on earth, and with felicity in heaven! Your country will thank you--your Queen will be debtor to you--you will achieve at once the highest from the lowest degree in chivalry--all men will honour, all women will love you--and I, sworn with you so early to the accomplishment of Queen Mary's freedom, will--yes, I will--love you better than--ever sister loved brother!" "Say on--say on!" whispered Roland, kneeling on one knee, and taking her hand, which, in the warmth of exhortation, Catherine held towards him.
"Nay," said she, pausing, "I have already said too much--far too much, if I prevail not with you--far too little if I do. But I prevail," she continued, seeing that the countenance of the youth she addressed returned the enthusiasm of her own--"I prevail; or rather the good cause prevails through its own strength--thus I devote thee to it." And as she spoke she approached her finger to the brow of the astonished youth, and, without touching it, signed the cross over his forehead--stooped her face towards him, and seemed to kiss the empty space in which she had traced the symbol; then starting up, and extricating herself from his grasp, darted into the Queen's apartment.