The
problem presented by the simple existence of the facts just summed up
remains in either case absolutely the same.
That the coarse and imperious nature of the hardy and able ruffian who
had now become openly her master should no less openly have shown itself
even in the first moments of their inauspicious union is what any
bystander of common insight must inevitably have foreseen. Tears,
dejection, and passionate expressions of a despair "wishing only for
death," bore fitful and variable witness to her first sense of a heavier
yoke than yet had galled her spirit and her pride. At other times her
affectionate gayety would give evidence as trustworthy of a fearless and
improvident satisfaction. They rode out in state together, and if he
kept cap in hand as a subject she would snatch it from him and clap it
on his head again; while in graver things she took all due or possible
care to gratify his ambition by the insertion of a clause in their
contract of marriage which made their joint signature necessary to all
documents of state issued under the sign manual. She despatched to
France a special envoy, the Bishop of Dunblane, with instructions
setting forth at length the unparalleled and hitherto ill-requited
services and merits of Bothwell, and the necessity of compliance at once
with his passion and with the unanimous counsel of the nation--a people
who would endure the rule of no foreign consort, and whom none of their
own countrymen were so competent to control, alike by wisdom and by
valor, as the incomparable subject of her choice.
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