On this summer afternoon the girl's beauty seemed more wondrous and magical than ever. Her eyes were purple-black, like the berries of the deadly nightshade seen in the twilight. Her face was pale, and the scarlet of her lips lay like twin geranium petals on new-fallen snow.

Gilles de Retz followed her with a certain grim and ghastly pride, as he marked the sensation caused by her entrance.

"This," he said, "is my lion tamer!"

But the girl never looked at him, nor in any way responded to his glances.

"Sybilla," said de Retz, holding her with his eyes, "these gentlemen are with us. They also are of the enemies of the house of Douglas—speak freely that which is in your heart!"

"My lords," said the Lady Sybilla, speaking in a level voice, and with her eyes fixed on the leaf-shadowed square of grass, which alone could be seen through the open window, "you have, I doubt not, each declared your grievance against William, Earl of Douglas. I alone have none. He is a gallant gentleman. France I have travelled, Spain also, and Portugal, and have explored the utmost East,—wherever, indeed, my Lord of Retz hath voyaged thither I have gone. But no braver or more chivalrous youth than William Douglas have I found in any land. I have no grievance against him, as I say, yet for that which hath been will I deliver him into your hands."

One of the men before her grew manifestly uneasy.

"We did not come hither to listen to the praises of the Earl of Douglas, even from lips so fair as yours!" sneered Crichton the Chancellor, lifting his eyes one moment from the parchment before him to the girl's face.

"He is our enemy," said the tutor of the King, Alexander Livingston, more generously, "but I will never deny that he is a gallant youth; also of his person proper to look upon."

And very complacently he smoothed down the lace ruffles which fell from the neck of his silken doublet midway down its front.

"The young man is a Douglas," said James the Gross, curtly; "if he were of coward breed, we had not needed to come hither secretly!"

"It needeth not four butchers to kill a sheep!" said de Retz. "Concerning that, we agree. Proceed, my Lady Sybilla."

The girl was now breathing more quickly, her bosom rising and falling visibly beneath her light silken gown.

"Yet because of those that have been of the house of Douglas before him, shall I have no pity upon William, sixth Earl thereof! And because of two dead Dukes of Touraine, will I deliver to you the third Duke, into whose mouth hath hardly yet come the proper gust of living. This is the tale I have heard a thousand times. There was in France, it skills not where, a vale quiet as a summer Sabbath day. The vines hung ripe-clustered in wide and pleasant vineyards. The olives rustled grey on the slopes. The bell swung in the monastery tower. The cottage in the dell was safe as the chÂteau on the hill. Then came the foreign leader of a foreign army, and lo! in a day, there were a hundred dead men in the valley, all honourable men slain in defence of their own doors. The smoky flicker of flames broke through the roof in the daylight. There was heard the crying of many women. And the man who wrought this was an Earl of Douglas."

The girl paused, and in a low whisper, intense as the breathing of the sea, she said:

"And for this will I deliver into your hands his grandson, William of Douglas!"

Then her voice came again to the ears of the four listeners, in a note low and monotonous like the wind that goes about the house on autumn evenings.

"There was also one who, being but a child, had escaped from that tumult and had found shelter in a white convent with the sisters thereof, who taught her to pray, and be happy in the peace of the hour that is exactly like the one before it. The shadow of the dial finger upon the stone was not more peaceful than the holy round of her life.

"Then came one who met her by the convent wall, met her under the shade of the orchard trees, met her under cloud of night, till his soul had power over hers. She followed him by camp and city, fearing no man's scorn, feeling no woman's reproach, for love's sake and his. Yet at the last he cast her away, like an empty husk, and sailed over the seas to his own land. She lived to wed the Sieur de Thouars and to become my mother."

"And for this will I reckon with his son William, Duke of Touraine."

She ceased, and de Retz began to speak.

"By me this girl has been taught the deepest wisdom of the ancients. I have delved deep in the lore of the ages that this maiden might be fitted for her task. For I also, that am a marshal of France and of kin to my Lord Duke of Brittany, have a score to settle with William, Earl of Douglas, as hath also my master, Louis the Dauphin!"

"It is enough," interjected Crichton the Chancellor, who had listened to the recital of the Lady Sybilla with manifest impatience, "it is the old story—the sins of the fathers are upon the children. And this young man must suffer for those that went before him. They drank of the full cup, and so he hath come now to the drains. It skills not why we each desire to make an end of him. We are agreed on the fact. The question is how."

It was again the voice of de Retz which replied, the deep silence of afternoon resting like a weight upon all about them.

"If we write him a letter inviting him to the Castle of Edinburgh, he will assuredly not come; but if we first entertain him with open courtesy at one of your castles on the way, where you, most wise Chancellor, must put yourself wholly in his hands, he will suspect nothing. There, when all his suspicions are lulled, he will again meet the Lady Sybilla; it will rest with her to bring him to Edinburgh."

The Chancellor had been busily writing on the parchment before him whilst de Retz was speaking. Presently he held up his hand and read aloud that which he had written.

"To the most noble William, Earl of Douglas and Duke of Touraine, greeting! In the name of King James the Second, whom God preserve, and in order that the realm may have peace, Sir William Crichton, Chancellor of Scotland, and Sir Alexander Livingston, Governor of the King's person, do invite and humbly intreat the Earl of Douglas to come to the City of Edinburgh, with such following as shall seem good to him, in order that he may be duly invested with the office of Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, which office was his father's before him. So shall the realm abide in peace and evil-doers be put down, the peaceable prevented with power, and the Earl of Douglas stand openly in the honourable place of his forebears."

The Chancellor finished his reading and looked around for approbation. James of Avondale was nodding gravely. de Retz, with a ghastly smile on his face, seemed to be weighing the phrases. Livingston was admiring, with a self-satisfied smile, the pinkish lights upon his finger-nails, and the girl was gazing as before out of the window into the green close wherein the leaves stirred and the shadows had begun to swim lazily on the grass with the coming of the wind from off the sea.

"To this I would add as followeth," continued Crichton. "The Chancellor of Scotland to William, Earl of Douglas, greeting and homage! Sir William Crichton ventures to hope that the Earl of Douglas will do him the great honour to come to his new Castle of Crichton, there to be entertained as beseemeth his dignity, to the healing of all ancient enmities, and also that they both may do honour to the ambassador of the King of France ere he set sail again for his own land."

"It is indeed a worthy epistle," said James the Gross, who, being sleepy, wished for an end to be made.

"There is at least in it no lack of 'Chancellor of Scotland!'" sneered Livingston, covertly.

"Gently, gently, great sirs," interposed de Retz, as the Chancellor looked up with anger in his eye; "have out your quarrels as you will—after the snapping of the trap. Remember that this which we do is a matter of life or death for all of us."

"But the Douglases will wash us off the face of Scotland if we so much as lay hand on the Earl," objected Livingston. "It might even affect the safety of his Majesty's person!"

James the Gross laughed a low laugh and looked at Crichton.

"Perhaps," he said; "but what if the gallant boy David go with his brother? Whoever after that shall be next Earl of Douglas can easily prevent that. Also Angus is for us, and my Lord Maxwell will move no hand. There remains, therefore, only Galloway, and my son William will answer for that. I myself am old and fat, and love not fighting, but to tame the Douglases shall be my part, and assuredly not the least."

All this while the Lady Sybilla had been standing motionless gazing out of the window. de Retz now motioned her away with an almost imperceptible signal of his hand, whereat Sir Alexander Livingston, seeing the girl about to leave the chamber of council, courteously rose to usher her out. And with the very slightest acknowledgment of his profound obeisance, Sybilla de Thouars went forth and left the four men to their cabal of treachery and death.