"I am doubtful," said the earl. "An invitation from a monarch is well nigh a command; and I am never disposed to disobey my king where I can obey with safety to my person and to my honour."
"Your honour is safe, my dear lord, wherever you are," replied Ramsay. "Where a man holds life lightly, when compared with integrity, his honour is ever in his own safe keeping, and no other hand can touch it. But your personal safety is another question, and I would have you look to it."
"Do you know aught, Dalhousie, of fresh designs meditated against me?" asked the earl, straightforwardly; nor was the answer less explicit.
"No, I do not," answered Ramsay. "Of fresh designs I know none; but I may doubt whether the old ones are abandoned; and I have often thought it a dangerous sort of sport, my good lord, to hunt with a half-reconciled enemy. The chase has its accidents, which occur most frequently where many people are assembled. Methinks I would advise you to hunt but little, and with those people alone upon whose care and prudence you can rely."
He spoke in a very meaning tone; and Gowrie answered, "I think your advice is good; and, moreover, I could hardly contrive to accept his majesty's invitation consistently with the arrangements already formed; for my dear mother has consented to come forth from the retirement which she has long kept, and meet me at Trochrie in a few days."
"Then I suppose we shall soon have to congratulate you on an event which, I trust, may contribute to your happiness," said Ramsay. "The court has been busy with the story for some time past."
"Not very soon," answered Gowrie; "at least, to a lover it seems long. Some three months must yet elapse--and it is long; for what man is there, Dalhousie, let him read the stars skilfully as he will, let him be learned, wise, experienced, who shall say all that may happen in three months? How often does the shaking hand of Fortune spill the wine out of the overflowing cup of joy even as she is handing it to our lips!"
"But too true, my dear lord," replied Sir George; "but I trust in your case it will not be so, for your fate is, I think, much in your own hands. If you but avoid dangers where they are known to exist, I think they will not come to seek you."
Gowrie mused. "What should be the cause of this enmity?" he said at length, in a meditating tone. "What have I done to merit it? Is it that some one is playing false both to the king and me, and poisoning his ear with lying tales of false disloyalty? Or is it that between his blood and mine there is a repugnance which cannot be pacified--that the sad and terrible deed done by my grandfather in his mother's presence, when his unborn eyes were yet waiting for the light, has placed enmity between our races even to the present hour? They say that there are strange mortal antipathies in the blood of some men towards others, which can never be conquered by any effort of the person hated; and surely such must be the case even now, for a more loyal subject, or one who more truly wishes well to his crown, his state, his person, does not live. What are my offences?"
"I could tell you some, my lord," replied Sir George Ramsay. "First and foremost, you are too powerful in the land for a king's love. Your estates are vast. Your wealth, during a long minority, has mightily increased; you are allied to all the most powerful and noble in the land; and you are known to be one who would oppose, without fear, or change, or wavering, the establishment of arbitrary power in Scotland, either in the church or state. These are motives strong enough, my lord, and they are the real ones. What the pretences may be, I know not; but if you keep yourself aloof from all factions and all parties, if you abstain, as far as is consistent with your honour and your station, from all opposition to the king, methinks that the feelings that have risen up must die away of themselves, like weeds that have no roots.--But here we are at your great house, my lord, and a grand mansion is it, certainly."