Chapter 24 - Page 2

were, they compensated the weary dulness of all the rest of the day.
The space of indulgence, however, was always brief, nor were any
private interviews betwixt him and Catharine permitted, or even
possible. Whether it were some special precaution respecting the
Queen's household, or whether it were her general ideas of propriety,
Dame Fleming seemed particularly attentive to prevent the young people
from holding any separate correspondence together, and bestowed, for
Catharine's sole benefit in this matter, the full stock of prudence
and experience which she had acquired, when mother of the Queen's
maidens of honour, and by which she had gained their hearty hatred.
Casual meetings, however, could not be prevented, unless Catherine had
been more desirous of shunning, or Roland Graeme less anxious in
watching for them. A smile, a gibe, a sarcasm, disarmed of its
severity by the arch look with which it was accompanied, was all that
time permitted to pass between them on such occasions. But such
passing interviews neither afforded means nor opportunity to renew the
discussion of the circumstances attending their earlier acquaintance,
nor to permit Roland to investigate more accurately the mysterious
apparition of the page in the purple velvet cloak at the hostelrie of
Saint Michael's.

The winter months slipped heavily away, and spring was already
advanced, when Roland Graeme observed a gradual change in the manners
of his fellow-prisoners. Having no business of his own to attend to,
and being, like those of his age, education, and degree, sufficiently
curious concerning what passed around, he began by degrees to suspect,
and finally to be convinced, that there was something in agitation
among his companions in captivity, to which they did not desire that
he should be privy. Nay, he became almost certain that, by some means
unintelligible to him, Queen Mary held correspondence beyond the walls
and waters which surrounded her prison-house, and that she nourished
some secret hope of deliverance or escape. In the conversations
betwixt her and her attendants, at which he was necessarily present,
the Queen could not always avoid showing that she was acquainted with
the events which were passing abroad in the world, and which he only
heard through her report. He observed that she wrote more and worked
less than had been her former custom, and that, as if desirous to lull
suspicion asleep, she changed her manner towards the Lady Lochleven
into one more gracious, and which seemed to express a resigned
submission to her lot. "They think I am blind," he said to himself,
"and that I am unfit to be trusted because I am so young, or it may be
because I was sent hither by the Regent. Well!--be it so--they