ain words within,
conveying some message which Laurence could not hear.

Then with an assured carriage and haughty stride came forth the
marshal, his grey hair and blue-black beard in strong contrast with
his haggard corpse-pale face, from which the momentary glow of youth
half-restored had already faded, as fades a footprint upon wet sand.

Gilles de Sille and Poitou bowed silently before him as men who have
done their commission, and who retire to await further orders. But La
Meffraye, once more apparent, stood her ground.

"Here are the dainty maids from the far land; no beggars' brats are
they. No strays and pickings from the streets. No, nor yet silly
village innocents who follow La Meffraye from the play-fields through
the woodlands to the Paradise of our Lord Gilles! Hasten not the joy!
Let these pearls of youth and beauteousness die indeed, but let them
die slowly and deliciously. And in the last blood of an ancient race
let our master bathe and find the new life he seeks. Hear us, O
Barran-Sathanas, and grant our prayer!"

Then La Meffraye approached the maids and would have touched the dress
of the little Margaret, as if to order it more daintily for the
pleasing of her master's eye. But Maud Lindesay thrust her aside like
an unclean thing.

Whereat La Meffraye laughed till her rusty black cloak quivered and
rustled from hood to hem.

"Ah, my proud lady," she croaked, "in a little, in a very little, you
too will be calling upon La Meffraye to save you, to pity you. But I,
La Meffraye, will gloat over each drop of blood that distils from your
fair neck. Aha, you shall change your tone when at the white
throat-apple which your sweetheart would have loved to kiss, you feel
the bite of the sharp slow knife. Then you will not thrust aside La
Meffraye. Then you shall cry and none shall pity. Then she will spurn
you from her knees."

"Out!" said Gilles de Retz, briefly, and like some inferior imping
devilkin before the great Master of Evil, La Meffraye retreated
hobbling to the doorway of the marshal's chamber, where she crouched
nodding and chuckling, mumbling inaudible words, and mingling them
ever with her dry cackling laughter.

Gilles de Retz stopped at the corner of the platform and looked long
at Maud and Margaret where they stood on the great central square of
marble. It was the Maid who spoke first.

"Dear Messire," she said sweetly and almost confidently, "you have a
little girl of your own. I k