“Sybilla,” said de Retz, holding her with his eyes, “these gentlemen are with us.  They also are of the enemies of the house of Douglas—­speak freely that which is in your heart!”

“My lords,” said the Lady Sybilla, speaking in a level voice, and with her eyes fixed on the leaf-shadowed square of grass, which alone could be seen through the open window, “you have, I doubt not, each declared your grievance against William, Earl of Douglas.  I alone have none.  He is a gallant gentleman.  France I have travelled, Spain also, and Portugal, and have explored the utmost East,—­wherever, indeed, my Lord of Retz hath voyaged thither I have gone.  But no braver or more chivalrous youth than William Douglas have I found in any land.  I have no grievance against him, as I say, yet for that which hath been will I deliver him into your hands.”

One of the men before her grew manifestly uneasy.

“We did not come hither to listen to the praises of the Earl of Douglas, even from lips so fair as yours!” sneered Crichton the Chancellor, lifting his eyes one moment from the parchment before him to the girl’s face.

“He is our enemy,” said the tutor of the King, Alexander Livingston, more generously, “but I will never deny that he is a gallant youth; also of his person proper to look upon.”

And very complacently he smoothed down the lace ruffles which fell from the neck of his silken doublet midway down its front.

“The young man is a Douglas,” said James the Gross, curtly; “if he were of coward breed, we had not needed to come hither secretly!”

“It needeth not four butchers to kill a sheep!” said de Retz.  “Concerning that, we agree.  Proceed, my Lady Sybilla.”

The girl was now breathing more quickly, her bosom rising and falling visibly beneath her light silken gown.

“Yet because of those that have been of the house of Douglas before him, shall I have no pity upon William, sixth Earl thereof!  And because of two dead Dukes of Touraine, will I deliver to you the third Duke, into whose mouth hath hardly yet come the proper gust of living.  This is the tale I have heard a thousand times.  There was in France, it skills not where, a vale quiet as a summer Sabbath day.  The vines hung ripe-clustered in wide and pleasant vineyards.  The olives rustled grey on the slopes.  The bell swung in the monastery tower.  The cottage in the dell was safe as the chateau on the hill.  Then came the foreign leader of a foreign army, and lo! in a day, there were a hundred dead men in the valley, all honourable men slain in defence of their own doors.  The smoky flicker of flames broke through the roof in the daylight.  There was heard the crying of many women.  And the man who wrought this was an Earl of Douglas.”

The girl paused, and in a low whisper, intense as the breathing of the sea, she said: 

"And for this will I deliver into your hands his grandson, William of Douglas!"