her deep displeasure - so that he was forced to withdraw from a
Court where his life was become impossible. For a while he wandered
up and down a land where every door was shut in his face, where
every man of whatsoever party, traitor or true, despised him alike.
In the end, he took himself off to his father, Lennox, and at
Glasgow he sought what amusement he could with his dogs and his
hawks, and such odd vulgar rustic love-affairs as came his way.

It was in allowing him thus to go his ways, in leaving her vengeance
- indeed, her justice - but half accomplished, that lay the
greatest of the Queen's mistakes. Better for her had she taken
with Darnley the direct way that was her right. Better for her,
if acting strongly then, she had banished or hanged him for his
part in the treason that had inspired the murder of Rizzio.
Unfortunately, a factor that served to quicken her abhorrence of
him served also to set a curb of caution upon the satisfaction
of it.

This factor that came so inopportunely into her life was her regard
for the arrogant, unscrupulous Earl of Bothwell. Her hand was
stayed by fear that men should say that for Bothwell's sake she had
rid herself of a husband become troublesome. That Bothwell had
been her friend in the hour when she had needed friends, and knew
not whom she might trust; that by his masterfulness he seemed a
man upon whom a woman might lean with confidence, may account for
the beginnings of the extraordinary influence he came so swiftly
to exercise over her, and the passion he awakened in her to such a
degree that she was unable to dissemble it.

Her regard for him, the more flagrant by contrast with her contempt