wledge of good and evil?"

Sybilla went to the door and stood again by the curtain.

"Then you swear by your own God that you will let no evil befall the
Scottish maids?" she said.

"I have told you already--let that suffice!" he replied with sudden
coldness; "you know that, like the Master whom I serve, I can keep my
word. I will not harm them, so long as their Scottish kinsfolk come
not hither meddling with my purposes. I have enough of meddlers in
France without adding outlanders thereto! I cannot keep a new and
permanent danger at grass within my gates."

The Lady Sybilla passed through the portal by which she had entered,
without adieu or leave-taking of any kind. Gilles de Retz rose as soon
as the curtain had fallen, and shook himself with a yawn, like one
who has got through a troublesome necessary duty. Then he walked to
the window and looked out. The woman had come back and was kneeling
before the Hotel de Pornic.

[Illustration: A BRIGHT LIGHT AS OF A FURNACE BURNT UP BEFORE HIM, AND
THE HEAT WAS OVERPOWERING AS IT RUSHED LIKE A RUDDY TIDE-RACE AGAINST
HIS FACE.]

At sight of him she cried with sudden shrillness, "My lord, my great
lord, give me back my child--my little Pierre. He is my heart's heart.
My lord, he never did you any harm in all his innocent life!"

The Marshal de Retz shut the window with a shrug of protest against
the vulgarity of prejudice. He did not notice four men in the garb of
pilgrims who stood in the dark of a doorway opposite.

"This is both unnecessary and excessively discomposing," he muttered;
"I fear Poitou has not been judicious enough in his selections."

He turned towards the private door, and as he did so Astarte the
she-wolf rose and silently followed him with her head drooped forward.
He went along a dark passage and pushed open a little iron door. A
bright light as of a furnace burnt up before him, and the heat was
overpowering as it rushed like a ruddy tide-race against his face.

"Well, Poitou, does it go better?" he said cheerfully, "or must we try
them of the other sex and somewhat younger, as I at first proposed?"

He let the door slip back, and the action of a powerful spring shut
out Astarte. Whereat she sat down on her haunches in the dark of the
passage, and showed her gleaming teeth in a grin, as, with cocked
ears, she listened to the sounds from within the secret laboratory of
the Marshal de Retz.

CHAPTER XLIII

MALISE FETCHES A CLOUT

T