Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 7.djvu/415

1 566. ] THE DARNLE Y MARRIA GE. 395 art by which women can outwit the coarser intellects of men. In the silence and solitude of that awful night she nerved herself for the work before her. With the grey of the twilight she saw Sir James Melville passing under her window, and called to him to bring the city guard and rescue her ; but Melville bowed and passed on ; at that moment rescue was impossible; she had nothing to depend upon but her own courage and her husband's folly. Could she escape her friends would rally round her, and her first thought was to fly in the disguise of one of her gentlewomen. But to escape alone, even if possible, would be to leave Darnley with the lords ; she resolved to play a bolder game, to divide him from them, and carry him off, and to leave them without the name of a king to shield their deed. In the first agony of passion she had been swept away from her self-control, and she had poured on her husband the full stream of her hate and scorn. He re- turned to her room on the Sunday morning to find her in appearance subdued, composed, and affectionate. To Mary Stuart it was an easy matter to play upon the selfish, cowardly, and sensual nature of Darnley. As Ruthven had foreseen, she worked upon him by her ca- resses ; she persuaded him that he had been fatally de- ceived in his supposed injuries ; but she affected to imagine that he had been imposed on by the arts of others, and when he lied she pretended to believe him. She uttered no word of reproach, but she appealed to him through the chiM his child whose safety was