Instantly the Chancellor turned and held out his hand.

“We have him,” he muttered, withdrawing it again as soon as he saw that the ambassador did not take it, being occupied gazing under his palm at the approaching train of riders.

The Lady Sybilla sat silent and watched the company which rode towards them—­with what thoughts in her heart, who shall venture to guess?  She kept her head studiously averted from the Marshal de Retz, and once when he touched her arm to call attention to something, she shuddered and moved a little nearer to the Chancellor.  Nevertheless, she obeyed her companion implicitly and without question when he bade her ride forward with them to receive the Chancellor’s guests.

Crichton took it on himself to rally the girl on her silence.

“Of what may you be thinking so seriously?” he said.

“Of thirty pieces of silver,” she replied instantly.

And at these words the marshal turned upon the girl a regard so black and relentless that the Chancellor, happening to encounter it, shrank back abashed, even as some devilkin caught in a fault might shrink from the angry eyes of the Master of Evil.

But the Lady Sybilla looked calmly at her kinsman.

“Of what do you complain?” he asked her.

“I complain of nothing,” she made him answer.  “I am that which I am, and I am that which you have made me, my Lord of Retz.  Fear not, I will do my part.”

Right handsome looked the young Earl of Douglas, as with a flush of expectation and pleasure on his face he rode up to the party of three who had come out to meet him.  He made his obeisance to Sybilla first, with a look of supremest happiness in his eyes which many women would have given their all to see there.  As he came close he leaped from his horse, and advancing to his lady he bent and kissed her hand.

“My Lady Sybilla,” he said, “I am as ever your loyal servant.”

The Chancellor and the ambassador had both dismounted, not to be outdone in courtesy, and one after the other they greeted him with what cordiality they could muster.  The narrow, thin-bearded face of the Chancellor and the pallid death-mask of de Retz, out of which glittered orbs like no eyes of human being, furnished a singular contrast to the uncovered head, crisp black curls, slight moustache, and fresh olive complexion of the young Earl of Douglas.

And as often as he was not looking at her, the eyes of the Lady Sybilla rested on Lord Douglas with a strange expression in their deeps.  The colour in her cheek came and went.  The vermeil of her lip flushed and paled alternate, from the pink of the wild rose-leaf to the red of its autumnal berry.

But presently, at a glance from her kinsman, Sybilla de Thouars seemed to recall herself with difficulty from a land of dreams, and with an obvious effort began to talk to William Douglas.

“Whom have you brought to see me?” she said.