"There they come!" cried de Retz, suddenly, pointing to a few specks of light which danced and dimpled between them and the low horizon of the south, against which, like a spacious armada, leaned a drift of primrose sunset clouds.
"There they come—I see them also!" said the Lady Sybilla, and suddenly sighed heavily and without cause.
"Where, and how many?" cried the Chancellor, in a shrill pipe usually associated with the physically deformed, but which from him meant no more than anxious discomposure.
The marshal pointed with the steady hand of the practised commander to the spot at which his keen eye had detected the cavalcade.
"Yonder," he said, "where the pine tree stands up against the sky."
"And how many? I cannot see them, my eyesight fails. I bid you tell me how many," gasped the Chancellor.
The ambassador looked long.
"There are, as I think, no more than twenty or thirty riders."
Instantly the Chancellor turned and held out his hand.
"We have him," he muttered, withdrawing it again as soon as he saw that the ambassador did not take it, being occupied gazing under his palm at the approaching train of riders.