there was a further door, also curtained, diagonally opposite that by which the party had entered; and in the centre of the same wall a tall blue canopy, fringed with silver, rose to the ceiling.  Beneath it, on a dais of a single step, stood a velvet chair, with gilded arms, and worked with the royal shield in the embroidery of the back—­with a crowned lion sejant, guardant, for the crest above the crown.  Half a dozen more chairs were ranged about the table; and, on a couch, with her feet swathed in draperies, with a woman standing over her behind, as if she had just risen up from speaking in her ear, lay the Queen of the Scots.  A tall silver and ebony crucifix, with a couple of velvet-bound, silver-clasped little books, stood on the table within reach of her hand, and a folded handkerchief beside them.

Mary was past her prime long ago; she was worn with sorrow and slanders and miseries; yet she appeared to the priest’s eyes, even then, like a figure of a dream.  It was partly, no doubt, the faintness of the light that came in through the half-shrouded windows that obliterated the lines and fallen patches that her face was beginning to bear; and she lay, too, with her back even to such light as there was.  Yet for all that, and even if he had not known who she was, Robin could not have taken his eyes from her face.  She lay there like a fallen flower, pale as a lily, beaten down at last by the waves and storms that had gone over her; and she was more beautiful in her downfall and disgrace, a thousand times, than when she had come first to Holyrood, or danced in the Courts of France.

Now it is not in the features one by one that beauty lies but rather in the coincidence of them all.  Her face was almost waxen now, blue shadowed beneath the two waves of pale hair; she had a small mouth, a delicate nose, and large, searching hazel eyes.  Her head-dress was of white, with silver pins in it; a light white shawl was clasped cross-wise over her shoulders; and she wore a loose brocaded dressing-gown beneath it.  Her hands, clasped as if in prayer, emerged out of deep lace-fringed sleeves, and were covered with rings.  But it was the air of almost superhuman delicacy that breathed from her most forcibly; and, when she spoke, a ring of assured decision revealed her quiet consciousness of royalty.  It was an extraordinary mingling of fragility and power, of which this feminine and royal room was the proper frame.

Sir Amyas knelt perfunctorily, as if impatient of it; and rose up again at once without waiting for the signal.  Mary lifted her fingers a little as a sign to the other two.

“I have brought the French doctor, madam,” said the soldier abruptly.  “But he must see your Grace in my presence.”

“Then you might as well have spared him, and yourself, the pains, sir,” came the quiet, dignified voice.  “I do not choose to be examined in your presence.”

Robin lifted his eyes to her face; but although he thought he caught an under air of intense desire towards him and That which he bore, there was no faltering in the tone of her voice.  It was, as some man said, as “soft as running water heard by night.”