With a kind of solicitous familiarity the Marshal de Retz took the lad by the arm and drew him to another window on the further side of the keep.

“Look forth and tell me what you see,” he said.

Laurence set his head out of the window.  He looked upon an intricate mass of building, composing the western wing of the castle, and it was some moments before he could distinguish what the Sieur de Retz wished him to see.  Then, as his eyes took in the details, he saw on the flat roof of a square tower beneath him two maidens seated, and when he looked closer—­lo! they were Margaret Douglas and, beside her, his brother’s sweetheart Maud Lindesay.  These two were sitting hand in hand, as was their wont, and the head of the child was bowed almost to her friend’s knee.  Maud’s arm was about Margaret’s neck, and her fingers caressed the childish tangle of hair.  Presently the elder lifted the younger upon her knee and hushed her like a mother who puts a tired child to sleep.

Immediately behind this group, in the shadow of a buttress, Laurence saw a tall man, masked, clad in a black suit, and with a drawn sword in his hand.

The marshal looked out over the lad’s shoulder.

“The day you are missed from the Castle of Machecoul, or the day that the rest of your company arrives here, that sword shall fall, but in a more terrible fashion than I can tell you!  That sentinel can neither hear nor speak, but he has his orders and will obey them.  I bid you good night.  Go to your singing in the choir.  It is time for the chanting of vespers in the chapel of the Holy Innocents.”

CHAPTER LII

THE JESTING OF LA MEFFRAYE

It was in the White Tower of Machecoul that the Scottish maidens were held at the mercy of the Lord of Retz.  At their first arrival in the country they had been taken to the quiet Chateau of Pouzauges, the birthplace of Poitou, the marshal’s most cruel and remorseless confidant.  Here, as the marshal had very truly informed the Lady Sybilla, they had been under the care of—­or, rather, fellow-prisoners with—­the neglected wife of Gilles de Retz, and at Pouzauges they had spent some days of comparative peace and security in the society of her daughter.

But at the first breath of the coming of the three strangers to the district they had been seized and securely conveyed to Machecoul itself—­there to be interned behind the vast walls and triple bastions of that fortress prison.

“I wonder, Maudie,” said Margaret Douglas, as they sat on the flat roof of the White Tower of Machecoul and looked over the battlements upon the green pine glades and wide seaward Landes, “I wonder whether we shall ever again see the water of Dee and our mother—­and Sholto MacKim.”

It is to be feared that the last part of the problem exceeded in interest all others in the eyes of Maud Lindesay.