She looked at Sholto when he came near, but not as one who sees or recognises.  Rather, as it were, dumb, drunken, besotted with grief, looked forth the soul of the Lady Sybilla upon the captain of the Douglas guard.  She heeded not his angry shout, for another voice rang in her ears, speaking the knightliest words ever uttered by a man about to die.  Sholto’s sword was raised threateningly in his hand, but Sybilla saw another blade gleam bright in the morning sun ere it fell to rise again dimmed and red.  Therefore she checked not her steed, nor turned aside, till Sholto laid his fingers upon her bridle-rein and leaped quickly to the ground, sword in hand, leaving his own beast to wander where it would.

“What do you here?” he cried.  “Where is my master?  What have they done to him?  I bid you tell me on your life!”

Sholto’s voice had no chivalrous courtesy in it now.  The time for that had gone by.  He lowered his sword point and there was tense iron in the muscles of his arm.  He was ready to kill the temptress as he would a beautiful viper.

The Lady Sybilla looked upon him, but in a dazed fashion, like one who rests between the turns of the rack.  In a little while she appeared to recognise him.  She noted the sword in his hand, the death in his eye—­and for the first time since the scene in the courtyard of Edinburgh Castle, she smiled.

Then the fury in Sholto’s heart broke suddenly forth.

“Woman,” he cried, “show me cause why I should not slay you.  For, by God, I will, if aught of harm hath overtaken my master.  Speak, I bid you, speak quickly, if you have any wish to live.”

But the Lady Sybilla continued to smile—­the same dreadful, mocking smile—­and somehow Sholto, with his weapon bare and his arm nerved to the thrust, felt himself grow weak and helpless under the stillness and utter pitifulness of her look.

“You would kill me—­kill me, you say—­” the words came low and thrilling forth from lips which were as those of the dead whose chin has not yet been bound about with a napkin, “ah, would that you could!  But you cannot.  Steel will not slay, poison will not destroy, nor water drown Sybilla de Thouars till her work be done!”

Sholto escaped from the power of her eye.

“My master—­” he gasped, “my master—­is he well?  I pray you tell me.”

Was it a laugh he heard in answer?  Rather a sound, not of human mirth but as of a condemned spirit laughing deep underground.  Then again the low even voice replied out of the expressionless face.

“Aye, your master is well.”

“Ah, thank God,” burst forth Sholto, “he is alive.”

The Lady Sybilla moved her hand this way and that with the gesture of a blind man groping.

“Hush,” she said, “I only said that he was well.  And he is well.  As I am already in the place of torment, I know that there is a heaven for those who die as William Douglas died.”