The Lady Sybilla sat silent and watched the company which rode towards them—with what thoughts in her heart, who shall venture to guess? She kept her head studiously averted from the Marshal de Retz, and once when he touched her arm to call attention to something, she shuddered and moved a little nearer to the Chancellor. Nevertheless, she obeyed her companion implicitly and without question when he bade her ride forward with them to receive the Chancellor's guests.
Crichton took it on himself to rally the girl on her silence.
"Of what may you be thinking so seriously?" he said.
"Of thirty pieces of silver," she replied instantly.
And at these words the marshal turned upon the girl a regard so black and relentless that the Chancellor, happening to encounter it, shrank back abashed, even as some devilkin caught in a fault might shrink from the angry eyes of the Master of Evil.
But the Lady Sybilla looked calmly at her kinsman.
"Of what do you complain?" he asked her.
"I complain of nothing," she made him answer. "I am that which I am, and I am that which you have made me, my Lord of Retz. Fear not, I will do my part."
Right handsome looked the young Earl of Douglas, as with a flush of expectation and pleasure on his face he rode up to the party of three who had come out to meet him. He made his obeisance to Sybilla first, with a look of supremest happiness in his eyes which many women would have given their all to see there. As he came close he leaped from his horse, and advancing to his lady he bent and kissed her hand.
"My Lady Sybilla," he said, "I am as ever your loyal servant."