Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/488

 4 68 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [en. 61. Philip's representative. 1 He had been trained by his mother in the art of lying, 2 and there was cause to be- lieve that even now in his negotiations with the Prince of Orange he was playing false, that he might after all carry his twelve thousand men to Don John, assist him in the overthrow of the Provinces, and then perhaps resume his earlier project and go to Scotland with Guise. 3 Whether Elizabeth ever seriously thought of becom- ing the wife of such a man was a question which those who best knev her were least able to answer. Persons at a distance, like Philip of Spain, who judged her by her past actions, pronounced unhesitatingly that she was merely pretending. 4 The ladies of the bedchamber told the Queen of Scots that she turned her lover and his expectations into ridicule. She may have been a deliberate deceiver, or she may have been one of those more accomplished artists who keep their ultimate deter- minations in a dark corner of their minds, which they prefer not to examine ; and imagine that they mean, or may mean, or will hereafter mean, what they do not- mean at all. At any rate the last and most remarkable chapter of the matrimonial adventures of Queen Elizabeth is now about to open. It has been seen that when she seemed in greatest alarm about Alencon's entrance into the 1 Sir Amyas Paulet to Elizabeth, October 7, 1578 : MSS. France. 2 Ibid. 3 Mary Stuart certainly expected this. See her letter to the Arch- bishop of Glasgow, September 15, 1578: LABANOFF. 4 ' Todo es embuste y entreteni- miento. '