And now you behold him broken by the terror she had so cunningly
evoked. He flung himself upon his knees before her, and with
upturned face and hands that caught and clawed at her own, he
implored her pardon for the wrong that in his folly he had done
her in taking sides with her enemies.

She dissembled under a mask of gentleness the loathing that his
cowardice aroused in her.

"My enemies?" she echoed wistfully. "Say rather your own enemies.
It was their enmity to you that drove them into exile. In your
rashness you have recalled them, whilst at the same time you have
so bound my hands that I cannot now help you if I would."

"You can, Mary," he cried, "or else no one can. Withhold the pardon
they will presently be seeking of you. Refuse to sign any remission
of their deed."

"And leave them to force you to sign it, and so destroy us both,"
she answered.

He ranted then, invoking the saints of heaven, and imploring her
in their name - she who was so wise and strong - to discover some
way out of this tangle in which his madness had enmeshed them.

"What way is there short of flight?" she asked him. "And how are
we to fly who are imprisoned here you as well as myself? Alas,
Darnley, I fear our lives will end by paying the price of your
folly."