The queen again thanked all her deliverers, gave her hand to Douglas to kiss one last time, kissed Little William on the forehead, and named him her favourite page for the future; then, profiting by the advice given her, entered her room where Mary Seyton, to the exclusion of every other woman, claimed the privilege of performing about her the duties with which she had been charged during their eleven months’ captivity in Lochleven Castle.

On opening her eyes, Mary Stuart thought she had had one of those dreams so gainful to prisoners, when waking they see again the bolts on their doors and the bars on their windows.  So the queen, unable to believe the evidence of her senses, ran, half dressed, to the window.  The courtyard was filled with soldiers, and these soldiers all friends who had hastened at the news of her escape; she recognised the banners of her faithful friends, the Seytons, the Arbroaths, the Herries, and the Hamiltons, and scarcely had she been seen at the window than all these banners bent before her, with the shouts a hundred times repeated of “Long live Mary of Scotland!  Long live our queen!” Then, without giving heed to the disarray of her toilet, lovely and chaste with her emotion and her happiness, she greeted them in her turn, her eyes full of tears; but this time they were tears of joy.  However, the queen recollected that she was barely covered, and blushing at having allowed herself to be thus carried away in her ecstasy, she abruptly drew back, quite rosy with confusion.

Then she had an instant’s womanly fright:  she had fled from Lochleven Castle in the Douglas livery, and without either the leisure or the opportunity for taking women’s clothes with her.  But she could not remain attired as a man; so she explained her uneasiness to Mary Seyton, who responded by opening the closets in the queen’s room.  They were furnished, not only with robes, the measure for which, like that of the suit, had been taken from Mary Fleming, but also with all the necessaries for a woman’s toilet.  The queen was astonished:  it was like being in a fairy castle.

“Mignonne,” said she, looking one after another at the robes, all the stuffs of which were chosen with exquisite taste, “I knew your father was a brave and loyal knight, but I did not think him so learned in the matter of the toilet.  We shall name him groom of the wardrobe.”

“Alas! madam,” smilingly replied Mary Seyton, “you are not mistaken:  my father has had everything in the castle furbished up to the last corselet, sharpened to the last sword, unfurled to the last banner; but my father, ready as he is to die for your Majesty, would not have dreamed for an instant of offering you anything but his roof to rest under, or his cloak to cover you.  It is Douglas again who has foreseen everything, prepared everything—­everything even to Rosabelle, your Majesty’s favourite steed, which is impatiently awaiting in the stable the moment when, mounted on her, your Majesty will make your triumphal re-entry into Edinburgh.”