It was in her early widowhood that she first met the man, and when their union came it brought ruin on them both.  In France there came to her one day one of her own subjects, the Earl of Bothwell.  He was but a few years older than she, and in his presence for the first time she felt, in her own despite, that profoundly moving, indescribable, and never-to-be-forgotten thrill which shakes a woman to the very center of her being, since it is the recognition of a complete affinity.

Lord Bothwell, like Queen Mary, has been terribly maligned.  Unlike her, he has found only a few defenders.  Maurice Hewlett has drawn a picture of him more favorable than many, and yet it is a picture that repels.  Bothwell, says he, was of a type esteemed by those who pronounce vice to be their virtue.  He was “a galliard, flushed with rich blood, broad-shouldered, square-jawed, with a laugh so happy and so prompt that the world, rejoicing to hear it, thought all must be well wherever he might be.  He wore brave clothes, sat a brave horse, and kept brave company bravely.  His high color, while it betokened high feeding, got him the credit of good health.  His little eyes twinkled so merrily that you did not see they were like a pig’s, sly and greedy at once, and bloodshot.  His tawny beard concealed a jaw underhung, a chin jutting and dangerous.  His mouth had a cruel twist; but his laughing hid that too.  The bridge of his nose had been broken; few observed it, or guessed at the brawl which must have given it to him.  Frankness was his great charm, careless ease in high places.”

And so, when Mary Stuart first met him in her eighteenth year, Lord Bothwell made her think as she had never thought of any other man, and as she was not to think of any other man again.  She grew to look eagerly for the frank mockery “in those twinkling eyes, in that quick mouth”; and to wonder whether it was with him always—­ asleep, at prayers, fighting, furious, or in love.

Something more, however, must be said of Bothwell.  He was undoubtedly a roisterer, but he was very much a man.  He made easy love to women.  His sword leaped quickly from its sheath.  He could fight, and he could also think.  He was no brawling ruffian, no ordinary rake.  Remembering what Scotland was in those days, Bothwell might well seem in reality a princely figure.  He knew Italian; he was at home in French; he could write fluent Latin.  He was a collector of books and a reader of them also.  He was perhaps the only Scottish noble of his time who had a book-plate of his own.  Here is something more than a mere reveler.  Here is a man of varied accomplishments and of a complex character.

Though he stayed but a short time near the queen in France, he kindled her imagination, so that when she seriously thought of men she thought of Bothwell.  And yet all the time she was fondling the young pages in her retinue and kissing her maids of honor with her scarlet lips, and lying on their knees, while poets like Ronsard and Chastelard wrote ardent love sonnets to her and sighed and pined for something more than the privilege of kissing her two dainty hands.