"To-morrow the king arrives," said Barton.
"Nay—we heard nothing of it," observed Sybilla.
"Sir Hew Borthwick, or the man so-called, informed us that the king was coming hither from Stirling on the morrow with the young Duke of Rothesay, and all the court."
Lady Margaret's colour heightened at this intelligence, and to conceal her emotion, she hastened to say,
"If Borthwick said so, it must be true, for he is one who is never far from those parasites and flatterers who crowd the court at present."
"Moreover, he told us that certain ambassadors from France, who are now at the constable's house in the Carse, would be presented soon after."
"And on what mission have they come?" asked Sybilla.
"I know not; but our right honourable informant, the worthy swashbuckler, hinted—and really this fellow often knows matters which are far above his position—that they had come anent some royal marriage, as the young prince's proposed alliance with the House of England has been so fortunately broken off since my poor father's battle in the English Channel."
Margaret trembled so excessively as Barton said this, that had the four lovers been less occupied with each other than they were, and had the children not been engaged with the silver collar, some of them must have observed her singular emotion, which however fortunately passed unnoticed.
Restrained by the presence of others, the conversation of Sybilla and Falconer (who, had the world been his, would have given it for liberty to press her to his breast) was confined to the merest commonplace; but Robert Barton and Euphemia, who, by Lord Drummond having consented that their marriage should take place in autumn, were under very different circumstances, had retired somewhat apart. She had passed her arm through his, and clasping her hands upon it, was looking up fondly in his sunburned face, and was telling him in a low and earnest voice of all she had learned concerning his father's death off the English coast; how she had prayed for him, and had masses said for his soul; and with an air, in which sternness, bitterness, and tenderness were curiously mingled, the heir of Sir Andrew Barton listened to her; for his thoughts hovered between the bright eyes and soft accents of the fair girl by his side and the carnage of that day's battle in the Kentish Downs, when he would have given the best ten years of his life to have stood for an hour on his father's deck. In these thoughts, and in those of future vengeance, he almost forgot that this untimely event (though it put him in possession of a princely fortune, an estate in Lothian, and a mansion like a baronial castle in Leith) would necessarily delay his marriage with Lady Euphemia for many months to come.