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.”