It was Bothwell who sat by Anna’s side at the banquet, not Konrad, her lover from childhood.  Konrad was displaced and slighted; he left the hall with a heart full of jealous and bitter thoughts.

“Dost thou not see the hand of fate in this meeting with Anna?” said Bothwell, when retiring, to his gigantic companion, Black Hob of Ormiston, the most merciless and ferocious of border barons.

“Nay,” said Hob; “I perceive only the finger of mischief!”

“I own to thee,” replied the earl, “that all my old passion is revived in full force.  My whole heart and soul are hers,” he went on passionately.

“Remember your solemn plight to the Lady Jane Gordon.  If that be broken, our doleful case will be worse than ever.”  For Bothwell was no ambassador, but an exile; and his real mission to King Frederick was in pursuit of a design to hand over the northern Scottish isles to Denmark, and become viceroy of them.

“Hob, be not insolent,” retorted Bothwell.  “I love her a thousand times more than Huntly’s sickly sister.”

It was always thus with this reckless noble—­the passion of the moment was ever too strong for past pledges and future policy.  While waiting at Bergen for the ship to be repaired, he wooed Anna with all the skill of an accomplished man of pleasure.

Anna’s heart was ready to be won, and it was not long ere Bothwell, having gained her love, asked Governor Rosenkrantz for her hand.  To his mortification, he was refused.  Anna, said the governor, had long been pledged to Konrad.

But Konrad, meanwhile, was in despair.  Anna no longer smiled upon him; he was lightly cast aside to make way for a more favoured lover.  One evening he was missing.  A day and a night passed, and Konrad was nowhere to be seen.  Search for him was useless—­he had disappeared.

Two letters were brought to Bothwell by a king’s messenger.  One was from King Frederick, commanding him to desist from his mock embassy, and instantly leave the Danish seas; the other, from the Earl of Huntly, told him that his enemies in Scotland were banished, and his forfeiture reversed.

Bothwell’s thoughts instantly turned to Anna.  He knew that she would not accompany him unless he married her, and policy now more than ever required that he should keep his troth to the sister of his friend, the Earl of Huntly.  Then there occurred to him the sinister thought of a mock marriage.

His actions were quick, and his persuasions, to the love-sick Anna, irresistible.  That evening the two were wedded by a crazy hermit who dwelt among the rocks of the fjord, and Anna, without a word of farewell to her kin, left her native land, it might be for ever.

A stormy voyage brought the ship to Westeray, in Shetland.  Bothwell escorted Anna to the castle of Noltland; and as she landed at the pier, a young man sprang forward and helped her across the plank.  She felt agitated, she knew not why; she looked at the man’s face, but it was concealed.  It was Konrad.  He had fallen over a cliff, had been carried out to sea on a plank, had been picked up by a ship which had carried him to Shetland, and had taken service with the castellan of Noltland.  The unexpected sight of Anna brought back his emotions to their starting-point, and recalled the poignancy of the hour in which he had realised that he had lost her.