r them. When they shall have used you to procure their
security from me, then they will deal with you as they have ever sought
to deal with you--so that you trouble them no more. Ali, at last you
understand!"

He came to his feet, his brow gleaming with sweat, his slender hands
nervously interlocked.

"Oh, God!" he cried in a stifled voice.

"Aye, you are in a trap, my lord. Yourself you've sprung it."

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."

Thus she played upon his terrors, so that he would not be dismissed
until she had promised that she would consider and seek some means of
saving him, enjoining him meanwhile to keep strict watch upon himself
and see that he betrayed nothing of his thoughts.

She left him to the chastening of a sleepless night, then sent for him
betimes on Monday morning, and bade him repair to the lords and tell
them that realizing herself a prisoner in their hands she was disposed
to make terms with them. She would grant them pardon for what was done
if on their side they undertook to be loyal henceforth and allowed her
to resume her liberty.

The message startled him. But the smile with which she followed it was
reassuring.

"There is something else you are to do," she said, "if