“It isn't a happy story--this parallel that you pick out,” commented Celia, absently.
“Happy! Pah!” retorted Edith, with spirit. “Who knows if it wasn't the only really happy thing in her life? The snobs and prigs all scold her and preach sermons at her--they did it in her lifetime: they do it now----” “Oh come, I'm neither a snob nor a prig,” put in Celia, looking up in her turn, and tempering with a smile the energy of her tone--“I don't blame her for her Bothwell; I don't criticize her. I never was even able to mind about her killing Darnley. You see I take an extremely liberal view. One might almost call it broad. But if I had been one of her ladies--her bosom friends--say Catherine Seton--and she had talked with me about it--I think I should have confessed to some forebodings--some little misgivings.”
“And do you know what she would have said?” Edith's swift question, put with a glowing face and a confident voice, had in it the ring of assured triumph. “She would have answered you: 'My dearest girl, all my life I have done what other people told me to do. In my childhood I was given in marriage to a criminal idiot. In my premature widowhood I was governed by a committee of scoundrels of both sexes until another criminal idiot was imposed upon me as a second husband. My own personality has never had the gleam of a chance. I have never yet done any single thing because I wanted to do it. Between first my politician-mother and her band of tonsured swindlers, and then my cantankerous brother and his crew of snarling and sour-minded preachers, and all the court liars and parasites and spies that both sides surrounded me with, I have lived an existence that isn't life at all. I purport to be a woman, but I have never been suffered to see a genuine man. And now here is one--or what I think to be one--and I'm given to understand that he is a pirate and a murderer and an unspeakable ruffian generally--but he takes my fancy, and he has beckoned to me to come to him, and so you will kindly get me my hat and jacket and gloves.' That's what she would have said to you, my dear.”
“And I”--said Celia, rising after a moment's pause, and putting her hand upon Edith's arm--“I would have answered, 'Dearest lady, in whatever befalls, I pray you never to forget that I am to the end your fond and devoted and loyal servant.'”