to yellow ivory by daylight, though it recovers its
dazzling brilliancy under candlelight; the face of the other was fair
and fresh and gay. At sixteen, Mary Stuart's skin had that exquisite
blond whiteness which made her beauty so celebrated. Her fresh and
piquant face, with its pure lines, shone with the roguish mischief of
childhood, expressed in the regular eyebrows, the vivacious eyes, and
the archness of the pretty mouth. Already she displayed those feline
graces which nothing, not even captivity nor the sight of her dreadful
scaffold, could lessen. The two queens--one at the dawn, the other in
the midsummer of life--presented at this moment the utmost contrast.
Catherine was an imposing queen, an impenetrable widow, without other
passion than that of power. Mary was a light-hearted, careless
bride, making playthings of her triple crowns. One foreboded great
evils,--foreseeing the assassination of the Guises as the only means of
suppressing enemies who were resolved to rise above the Throne and the
Parliament; foreseeing also the bloodshed of a long and bitter struggle;
while the other little anticipated her own judicial murder. A sudden and
strange reflection calmed the mind of the Italian.

"That sorceress and Ruggiero both declare this reign is coming to an
end; my difficulties will not last long," she thought.

And so, strangely enough, an occult science forgotten in our day--that
of astrology--supported Catherine at this moment, as it did, in fact,
throughout her life; for, as she witnessed the minute fulfilment of the
prophecies of those who practised the art, her belief in it steadily
increased.

"You are very gloomy, madame," said Mary Stuart, taking from the hands
of her waiting-woman, Dayelle, a little cap and placing the point of it
on the parting of her hair, while two wings of rich lace surrounded the
tufts of blond curls which clustered on her temples.

The pencil of many painters have so frequently represented this
head-dress that it is thought to have belonged exclusively to Mary Queen
of Scots; whereas it was really invented by Catherine de' Medici, when
she put on mourning for Henri II. But she never knew how to wear it
with the grace of her daughter-in-law, to whom it was becoming. This
annoyance was not the least among the many which the queen-mother
cherished against the young queen.

"Is the queen reproving me?" said Catherine, turning to Mary.

"I owe you all respect, and should not d