Douglas and Sybilla return with a light on their
faces, and their eyes large and vague, he bethought him of Maud
Lindesay, and was glad that, for a little at least, the sun of love
should shine upon his lord.

It was in the gracious fulness of the early autumn, when the sheaves
were set up in many a park and little warded holt about the Moorfoot
braes, that William Douglas and Sybilla de Thouars stood together upon
a crest of hill, crowned with dwarf birch and thick foliaged alder--a
place in the retirement of whose sylvan bower they had already spent
many tranced hours.

The Lady Sybilla sat down on a worn grey rock which thrust itself
through the green turf. William Douglas stood beside her pulling a
blade of bracken to pieces. The girl had been wearing a broad flat cap
of velvet, which in the coolness of the twilight she had removed and
now swung gently to and fro in her hand as she looked to the north,
where small as a toy and backed by the orange glow of sunset, the
Castle of Edinburgh could be seen black upon its wind-swept ridge. The
girl was speaking slowly and softly.

"Nay, Earl Douglas," she said, "marriage must not be named to Sybilla
de Thouars, certainly never by an Earl of Douglas and Duke of
Touraine. He must wed for riches and fair provinces. His house is
regal already. He is better born than the King, more powerful also.
The daughter of a Breton squire, of a forlorn and deserted mother, the
kinswoman of Gilles de Retz of Machecoul and Champtoce, is not for
him."

"A Douglas makes many sacrifices," said the young man with
earnestness; "but this is not demanded of him. Four generations of us
have wedded for power. It is surely time that one did so for love."

The girl reached him her hand, saying softly: "Ah, William, would that
it had been so. Too late I begin to think on those things which might
have been, had Sybilla de Thouars been born under a more fortunate
star. As it is I can only go on--a terror to myself and a bane to
others."

The young man, absorbed in his own thoughts, did not hear her words.

"The world itself were little to give in order that in exchange I
might possess you," he answered.

The girl laughed a strange laugh, and drew back her hand from his.

"Possess me, well--but marry me--no. Honest men and honourable like
Earl Douglas do not wed with the niece of Gilles de Retz. I had
thought my heart within me to be as flint in the chalk, yet now I pray
you on my knees to le