to these things?"

"Does it matter at all what I answer?" asked the Earl, succinctly.

"I do not bandy words with you," said the Chancellor; "I order you to
make your pleading, or stand within your danger."

"And yet," said William Douglas, gravely, "words are all that you dare
bandy with me. Even if I honoured you by laying aside my dignities and
consented to break a lance with you, you would refuse to afford me
trial by battle, which is the right of every peer accused."

"'Tis a barbarous custom," said the Chancellor; "we will try your case
upon its merit."

The Earl laughed a little mocking laugh.

"It will be somewhat safer," said he, "but haste you and get the sham
done with. I plead nothing. I do not even tell you that you lie. What
doth one expect of a gutter-dog but that it should void the garbage it
hath devoured? But I do ask you, Marshal de Retz, as a brave soldier
and the representative of an honourable King, what you have done with
the Lady Sybilla?"

The Marshal de Retz smiled--a smile so chill, cruel, hard, that the
very soldiers on guard, seeing it, longed to slay him on the spot.

"May I, in return, ask my Lord Earl of Douglas and Duke of Touraine
what is that to him?" he said, with sneering emphasis upon the titles.

"It matters to me," replied William Douglas, boldly, "more than life,
and almost as much as honour. The Lady Sybilla did me the grace to
tell me that she loved me. And I in turn am bound to her in life and
death."

The Chancellor and the tutor broke into laughter, but the marshal
continued to smile his terrible smile of determinate evil.

"Listen," he said at last, "hear this, my Lord of Touraine; ever since
we came to this kingdom, and, indeed, long before we left the realm of
France, the Lady Sybilla intended nothing else than your deception and
destruction. Poor dupe, do you not yet understand? She it was that
cozened you with fair words. She it was that advised you to come
hither that we might hold you in our hands. For her sake you obeyed.
She was the willing bait of the trap your foes set for you. What think
you of the Lady Sybilla now?"

William of Douglas did not answer in words, but as the marshal ceased
speaking, he drew himself together like a lithe animal that sways this
way and that before springing. His right hand dropped softly from his
brother's shoulder upon the hilt of his own dagger.

Then with one sudden bound he was over the barrier and upon the dais.
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