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 abi