Beneath it, on a dais of a single step, stood a velvet chair, with
gilded arms, and worked with the royal shield in the embroidery of the
back--with a crowned lion _sejant, guardant_, for the crest above the
crown. Half a dozen more chairs were ranged about the table; and, on a
couch, with her feet swathed in draperies, with a woman standing over
her behind, as if she had just risen up from speaking in her ear, lay
the Queen of the Scots. A tall silver and ebony crucifix, with a couple
of velvet-bound, silver-clasped little books, stood on the table within
reach of her hand, and a folded handkerchief beside them.
Mary was past her prime long ago; she was worn with sorrow and slanders
and miseries; yet she appeared to the priest's eyes, even then, like a
figure of a dream. It was partly, no doubt, the faintness of the light
that came in through the half-shrouded windows that obliterated the
lines and fallen patches that her face was beginning to bear; and she
lay, too, with her back even to such light as there was. Yet for all
that, and even if he had not known who she was, Robin could not have
taken his eyes from her face. She lay there like a fallen flower, pale
as a lily, beaten down at last by the waves and storms that had gone
over her; and she was more beautiful in her downfall and disgrace, a
thousand times, than when she had come first to Holyrood, or danced in
the Courts of France.
Now it is not in the features one by one that beauty lies but rather in
the coincidence of them all.
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