“Work my will and tell me what you see!”

Her hands were clasped under a light silken apron which she wore descending from her neck and caught in a loose loop behind her gown.  The fingers were firmly netted one over the other and clutched between them was a golden crucifix.

The girl was praying, as one prays who dares not speak.

“O God, who didst hang on this cross—­keep now my soul.  Condemn it afterwards, but help me to keep it this night.  Deliver me—­oh, deliver from the power of this man.  Help me to lie.  By Thy Son’s blood, help me to lie well this night.”

“Where are the three men from the land of the Scots?  Tell me what you see.  Tell me all,” the marshal commanded, still standing before her in the same posture.

Then the voice of the Lady Sybilla began to speak, low and even, and with that strange halt at the end of the sentences.  The Lord of Retz nodded, well pleased when he heard the sound.  It was the voice of the seeress.  Oftentimes he had heard it before, and it had never deceived him.

“I see a boat on a stormy sea,” she said; “there are three men in it.  One is great of stature and very strong.  The others are young men.  They are trying to furl the sail.  A gust strikes them.  The boat heels and goes over.  I see them struggling in the pit of waters.  There are cliffs white and crumbling above them.  They are calling for help as they cling to the boat.  Now there is but one of them left.  I see him trying to climb up the slippery rocks.  He falls back each time.  He is weary with much buffeting.  The waves break about him and suck him under.  Now I do not see the men any more, but I can hear the broken mast of the boat knocking hollow and dull against the rocks.  Some few shreds of the sail are wrapped about it.  But the three men are gone.”

She ceased suddenly.  Her lips stopped their curiously detached utterance.

But under her breath and deep in her soul Sybilla de Thouars was still praying as before.  And this which follows was her prayer: 

“O God, his devil is surely departed from him.  I thank thee, God of truth, for helping me to lie.”

“It is well,” said Gilles de Retz, standing erect with a satisfied air.  “All is well.  The three Scots who sought my life are gone to their destruction.  Now, Sybilla de Thouars, I bid you look upon John, Duke of Brittany.  Tell me what he does and says.”

The level, impassive, detached voice began again.  The hands clasped the cross of gold more closely under the silk apron.

“I see a room done about with silver scallop shells and white-painted ermines.  I see a fair, cunning-faced, soft man.  Behind him stands one tall, spare, haggard—­”

“Pierre de l’Hopital, President of Brittany—­one that hates me,” said de Retz, grimly between his teeth.  “I will meet my fingers about his dog’s throat yet.  What of him?”

The Lady Sybilla, without a quiver of her shut eyelids took up the cue.