the Scot beside her.
She reminded him of the great affection she had for Mary.
“To no other would I offer Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester. You must tell your mistress that in so doing I offer her the greatest compliment I could offer any. I am giving her the man I would have married myself were I not determined to live and die in the virgin state.”
“Madam,” he said, “ye need not to tell me that, for I know your stately stomach. You think that if you married you would be but Queen of England, and now you are both King and Queen. You will not suffer a commander.”
She looked at him shrewdly. He was no fool, this dour Scotsman.
Very soon after Robert was made Earl of Leicester, the Archduke Charles, having been rejected by Mary, began again to sue for Elizabeth’s hand. Catherine de’ Medici was trying to get the Queen for her son, King Charles; and failing him, for his brother, the Duke of Anjou.
Elizabeth meanwhile feigned to consider these suggestions with rapt attention. She allowed Darnley, against the advice of Cecil and her Council, to leave for Scotland.
It seemed that as soon as the Queen of Scots saw the beardless boy with the lady’s face, she fell in love with him and decided to dispense with the consent of the Queen of England. She married him.
It was not until after the ceremony that Elizabeth heard of the marriage.
She received the information calmly, and laughed merrily over it with the newly-made Earl of Leicester.
SEVEN
It was now eight years since Elizabeth had become Queen, and still she was unmarried, and still Robert continued to urge their union; but he was less hopeful than he had been.
He was now in his thirties—a little less handsome but not less attractive to women; and if the Queen could not make up her mind whether she would marry him or not, there were many ladies who would not have hesitated for a minute if he had offered himself to them.
He was one of the richest men in England now; he was the most powerful. But he had paid for these honors, and Robert was beginning to think that he had paid dearly.
He had always been attracted by children; the little boy who had served him so nobly during his imprisonment was no exceptional case. Children’s eyes followed him; they liked his magnificence, his great stature, his handsome face. His manner toward them was all that children desired it to be; he treated them with an easy nonchalance; he made them feel, not that he was stooping to their level, but that miraculously he had lifted them to his.
He now began to examine his dissatisfaction. He believed that above all things he had wished for marriage with the Queen; perhaps he still did. But he also felt a great desire to have children—sons—and they must be legitimate; yet what chance had he of getting legitimate sons while he must go on awaiting the Queen’s pleasure? Naturally he would prefer his first-born to be heir to the throne; but had Elizabeth decided to wait until they were too old to have children?
He had heard the words of the Scottish ambassador: “Madam, I know your stately stomach. You would be King and Queen.”
There was truth in those words, and it might well be that she, who would tolerate none equal with herself, had secretly made up her mind never to marry.
He had not, of course, been faithful to the Queen; but his love-affairs had had to be secret. He could never so much as look for long at any one of the Court beauties, for if the Queen’s jealous eyes did not detect a Court peccadillo, her spies would; and they were everywhere. He had powerful enemies who were hoping for his overthrow; Cecil was one of them, and since he had been made Earl of Leicester and Cecil had received no similar honor, the Queen’s chief minister must certainly be envious. Norfolk, Sussex, Arundel—those most powerful men—were only a few of his enemies. He knew that they were secretly working against his marriage with the Queen, and that the friendship they feigned to express was merely a sign that they feared Elizabeth might one day marry him. He suspected that Cecil had put into Elizabeth’s head the idea of marrying him to Mary Stuart, and although he had come well out of that matter as the Earl of Leicester, he could not help feeling that