“So please your Highness,” answered his counsellor, “if you would use the hand of the mediciner, Dwining—he writes like a clerk.”
“Hath he a hint of the circumstances? Is he possessed of them?”
“Fully,” said Ramorny; and, stepping to the window, he called Dwining from the boat.
He entered the presence of the Prince of Scotland, creeping as if he trode upon eggs, with downcast eyes, and a frame that seemed shrunk up by a sense of awe produced by the occasion.
“There, fellow, are writing materials. I will make trial of you; thou know’st the case—place my conduct to my father in a fair light.”
Dwining sat down, and in a few minutes wrote a letter, which he handed to Sir John Ramorny.
“Why, the devil has aided thee, Dwining,” said the knight. “Listen, my dear lord. ‘Respected father and liege sovereign—Know that important considerations induce me to take my departure from this your court, purposing to make my abode at Falkland, both as the seat of my dearest uncle Albany, with whom I know your Majesty would desire me to use all familiarity, and as the residence of one from whom I have been too long estranged, and with whom I haste to exchange vows of the closest affection from henceforward.’”
The Duke of Rothsay and Ramorny laughed aloud; and the physician, who had listened to his own scroll as if it were a sentence of death, encouraged by their applause, raised his eyes, uttered faintly his chuckling note of “He! he!” and was again grave and silent, as if afraid he had transgressed the bounds of reverent respect.
“Admirable!” said the Prince—“admirable! The old man will apply all this to the Duchess, as they call her, of Rothsay. Dwining, thou shouldst be a secretis to his Holiness the Pope, who sometimes, it is said, wants a scribe that can make one word record two meanings. I will subscribe it, and have the praise of the device.”
“And now, my lord,” said Ramorny, sealing the letter and leaving it behind, “will you not to boat?”