For without clatter of accoutrement or tramp of hoof, without companion or attendant, a white palfrey had appeared through the green arches of the woodlands. A girl was seated upon the saddle, swaying with gentle movement to the motion of her steed. At the sight of her figure as she came nearer a low cry of horror and amazement broke from Sholto's lips.
It was the Lady Sybilla.
Yet he knew that he had left her behind him in Edinburgh, the siren temptress of Earl Douglas, the woman who had led his master into the power of the enemy, she for whose sake he had refused the certainty of freedom and life. Anger against this smiling enchantress suddenly surged up in Sholto's heart.
"Halt there—on your life!" he cried, and urged his wearied steed forward. Like dry leaves before a winter wind, the children were dispersed every way by the gust of his angry shout. But the maiden on the palfrey either heeded not or did not hear.
Whereupon Sholto rode furiously crosswise to intercept her. He would learn what had befallen his master. At least he would avenge him upon one—the chiefest and subtlest of his enemies. But not till he had come within ten paces did the Lady Sybilla turn upon him the fulness of her regard. Then he saw her face. It broke upon him sudden as the sight of imminent hell to one sure of salvation. He had expected to find there gratified ambition, sated lust, exultant pride, cruelest vengeance. He saw instead as it had been the face of an angel cast out of heaven, or perhaps, rather, of a martyr who has passed through the torture chamber on her way to the place of burning.
The sight stopped Sholto stricken and wavering. His anger fell from him like a cloak shed when the sun shines in his strength.
The Lady Sybilla's face showed of no earthly paleness. Marble white it was, the eyes heavy with weeping, purple rings beneath accentuating the horror that dwelt eternally in them. The lips that had been as the bow of Apollo were parted as though they had been singing the dirge of one beloved, and ever as she rode the tears ran down her cheeks and fell on her white robe, and lower upon her palfrey's mane.
She looked at Sholto when he came near, but not as one who sees or recognises. Rather, as it were, dumb, drunken, besotted with grief, looked forth the soul of the Lady Sybilla upon the captain of the Douglas guard. She heeded not his angry shout, for another voice rang in her ears, speaking the knightliest words ever uttered by a man about to die. Sholto's sword was raised threateningly in his hand, but Sybilla saw another blade gleam bright in the morning sun ere it fell to rise again dimmed and red. Therefore she checked not her steed, nor turned aside, till Sholto laid his fingers upon her bridle-rein and leaped quickly to the ground, sword in hand, leaving his own beast to wander where it would.
"What do you here?" he cried. "Where is my master? What have they done to him? I bid you tell me on your life!"
Sholto's voice had no chivalrous courtesy in it now. The time for that had gone by. He lowered his sword point and there was tense iron in the muscles of his arm. He was ready to kill the temptress as he would a beautiful viper.