As they bound them rudely hand and foot, the long and beautiful hair of Maud Lindesay escaped from its fastenings and fell down till it reached the bath of red porphyry which extended underneath the whole length of the altar of iron.

Then through all the Temple of Evil there ensued sudden silence.  Not a sob or a moan escaped from the doomed maidens, and the feet of the assistants fell silent and soft as the paws of wild beasts upon the ebon floor.

Gilles de Retz waited till his acolytes had retired to their appointed places, where they stood like carven statues watching what should happen.  Then slowly and deliberately he ascended to the broad platform from which the iron altar rose, and stood with his arms folded over his flame-coloured robe, looking gloatingly down, upon his innocent victims.  Maud Lindesay was the nearer to him, and her unbound hair fell back and touched the peak of his pointed shoe of crimson Cordovan leather.

With a quick movement he caught up a handful of its rich luxuriance and allowed it to run through his fingers like sand again and yet again, with apparent delight in the sensation.

Even as he did so the dim figure of the horned demon above appeared to lean forward as if to touch him, and with a rushing noise the great hour-glass set upon a pedestal at the foot of the image turned itself completely over.  Gilles with a startled air turned also, and seeing what it was he laughed a strange hollow laugh.

“It is indeed the hour, the hour of doom, fair maids,” he said, looking down upon them as deferentially as if he had been paying his court in the great hall of Thrieve, “but it shall not pass without taking with it your souls to another, and I trust a higher, sphere!”

He paused, but no complaint or appeal reached his cruel and inexorable ear.  The certain graciousness of Providence to those in extreme peril seemed to have blunted the edge of fear in the innocent victims.  They lay still and apparently without consciousness upon the iron altar.  The red glow played upon their faces, shining through from the inner chamber, and the figure of the marshal stood out black against it.

On the floor lay the goblet from which he had drunk the Red Milk.

“Give me the knife!” he cried, sudden as a trumpet that is blown.

And reaching a withered hand within the marshal’s chamber as if to detach something from the wall, La Meffraye hobbled quickly across the altar platform, bearing in her hand a shining weapon of steel, broad of blade and curved at the point.  She placed the ebony handle in the marshal’s hand, who weighed it lovingly in his grasp.

Then for the first time since the men had bound her, the sweet childish eyes of little Margaret were unclosed and looked up at Gilles de Retz with the touching wonder of helplessness and innocence.

At that moment the image appeared to Laurence to beckon to him out of the gloom.  A quick and nervous resolve ran through his veins.  His muscles became like steel within his flesh.  He rose to his feet, and, without pause for thought, rushed across the chapel from the niche where he had been hidden.