"Why call me prince? Dear Margaret, here there is no prince."
"Nor princess!" she sighed.
"There is—for thou art Duchess of Rothesay, and shall yet be Queen of Scotland—even as my ancestress, Annabella Drummond, was before thee."
"Alas, but for our unfortunate consanguinity through her, we had not been wedded in secret, or been driven thus to commit a mortal sin. I had not borne this poor child unknown, or carried under my bosom a load of grief and shame."
"Shame," reiterated Rothesay, kissing away her tears. "Ah, Margaret, have you forgotten that night in the cathedral at Dunblane, when we were so solemnly united, as Father Zuill and the cathedral registrars shall yet bear testimony in Parliament. Ere long the Bishop of Dunblane will bring from Rome the dispensation that shall clear us all, and then I shall again espouse thee, Margaret, with such splendour as Scotland has not seen since Mary of Gueldres stood by the side of James II. at the altar of the Holy Cross."
"But till then, I must live in terror, and love in secret. Oh, prince, had I loved thee less—had I known or foreseen—but I most not weary thee with unavailing reproaches, prince——"
"Prince again! Now this is most unkind. Dear Margaret, why call me otherwise than James Stuart—am I not thine own James?"
"Thou art, indeed, and my beloved one!" said Margaret, laying her beautiful head on the breast of her handsome lover, with one of her sweetest and most confiding smiles; "but do pardon me, if I say, that there are times when I look forward and tremble—look back and weep. There is something to me so terrible in the renewal of the old strife between the king and the nobles. My father, the proudest among them, is ever muttering deep threats of vengeance against the royal favourites, and in the quarrel which I see too surely coming, if all the pride and ferocity of the peers are unchained against the throne, what may be the fate of thee, of this poor tender bud, and of myself? Oh, James, think of the many who wish for the English alliance, and who would brush me from their path like a gossamer web!"
"Thee!" exclaimed the prince, clutching his poniard; "not Angus himself, even in the heart of his strongest fortresses, or amid his twenty thousand vassals, dare harbour an evil thought against the lady Rothesay loves. Nay, nay, Maggie, thou art sorely in error."
"At a wave from the hand of Angus, all the troopers of the east and middle marches are in their helmets; then think of the hatred of Shaw and Hailes—the treachery of Kyneff—the mad ambition of them all! They are brooding over revolt—one day it will come. Would, dear prince, that we had never met or rather, that I had never been!"