When he had finished the Chancellor said, “And now, Earl Douglas, what answer have you to these things?”

“Does it matter at all what I answer?” asked the Earl, succinctly.

“I do not bandy words with you,” said the Chancellor; “I order you to make your pleading, or stand within your danger.”

“And yet,” said William Douglas, gravely, “words are all that you dare bandy with me.  Even if I honoured you by laying aside my dignities and consented to break a lance with you, you would refuse to afford me trial by battle, which is the right of every peer accused.”

“’Tis a barbarous custom,” said the Chancellor; “we will try your case upon its merit.”

The Earl laughed a little mocking laugh.

“It will be somewhat safer,” said he, “but haste you and get the sham done with.  I plead nothing.  I do not even tell you that you lie.  What doth one expect of a gutter-dog but that it should void the garbage it hath devoured?  But I do ask you, Marshal de Retz, as a brave soldier and the representative of an honourable King, what you have done with the Lady Sybilla?”

The Marshal de Retz smiled—­a smile so chill, cruel, hard, that the very soldiers on guard, seeing it, longed to slay him on the spot.

“May I, in return, ask my Lord Earl of Douglas and Duke of Touraine what is that to him?” he said, with sneering emphasis upon the titles.

“It matters to me,” replied William Douglas, boldly, “more than life, and almost as much as honour.  The Lady Sybilla did me the grace to tell me that she loved me.  And I in turn am bound to her in life and death.”

The Chancellor and the tutor broke into laughter, but the marshal continued to smile his terrible smile of determinate evil.

“Listen,” he said at last, “hear this, my Lord of Touraine; ever since we came to this kingdom, and, indeed, long before we left the realm of France, the Lady Sybilla intended nothing else than your deception and destruction.  Poor dupe, do you not yet understand?  She it was that cozened you with fair words.  She it was that advised you to come hither that we might hold you in our hands.  For her sake you obeyed.  She was the willing bait of the trap your foes set for you.  What think you of the Lady Sybilla now?”

William of Douglas did not answer in words, but as the marshal ceased speaking, he drew himself together like a lithe animal that sways this way and that before springing.  His right hand dropped softly from his brother’s shoulder upon the hilt of his own dagger.

Then with one sudden bound he was over the barrier and upon the dais.  Almost his blade was at the marshal’s throat, and but for the crossed partisans of two guards who stood on either side of de Retz, he had died there and then by the dagger of William Douglas.  As it was, the youth was brought to a stand with his breast pressed vainly against the steel points, and paused there crying out in fury, “Liar and toad!  Come out from behind these varlets that I may slay thee with my hand.”