With an unpleasant foreboding of what was to follow, and with a beating heart and flushing brow, the young prince hurried to the presence of his father, whom he found seated in a little wainscoted room, the windows of which faced the sunlit Tay and the opposite coast, where the rich corn-fields of Fife lay ripening and basking in the noonday sun, and where the waving woods of Balmerino, Monkquhannie, and the Peak of Craigsanquhar blended the golden grain with emerald green. The ceiling of this apartment was profusely decorated with coats of arms and gaudy ornaments; the floor was of oak, polished and varnished. Books, globes, musical instruments, hunting-whips, handsome swords and ivory bugles, were strewn about the chairs and side tables; but the principal object was a grotesque and venerable buffet, which had belonged (as tradition said) to Saint Margaret, and thereon were placed six ancient silver goblets, which had belonged to King Robert I.; and above them hung the shirt of mail worn by him at the Battle of Bannockburn; seven valuable relics treasured by James III. with peculiar care, and which, long after his death, were preserved in the Castle of Edinburgh. The king was clad in a plain dressing-gown of green silk, the open breast and loose sleeves of which displayed his rich shirt, with its diamond buttons; his vest and hose were of grey velvet, and his boots of soft white leather, with scarlet heels. A great ruby ring was on one of his fingers, and Father Zuill's pedantic _Treatise on Burning-glasses_ lay open beside him. By the aspect of severity which clouded the usually open and kind face of his father, Rothesay perceived in a moment that his secret was known to him. Reclining back in his arm-chair, with a hand resting on each of the carved arms, James III. gazed with calm but stern eyes on the young prince, and said.-- "Shame on thee, Rothesay, for thou hast deceived me, who have ever trusted and yet love thee so well! But worse than that, thou hast deceived the people thou mayst one day govern. Alas! the Lord Drummond has told me all." "I did indeed deceive you--but how was I to act? The intrigues of England, my successive betrothal to two princesses of that nation, my relationship to Margaret Drummond through our ancestress Queen Annabella, and the necessity for a public dispensation, must all plead my excuse for her; for myself I make none; upbraid me as you may, I feel that I deserve reproach for deceiving those who loved me, but not more than Margaret Drummond." Rothesay gathered a courage, as it were, from desperation; and aware how much the happiness of the future depended on the effect produced at this first interview on the subject, he endeavoured to rally all his presence of mind.