The girl having acknowledged their salutations with a stately and well-accustomed motion of the head, reached a hand for Sholto to lift her from her palfrey.
Then, still without spoken word, she silently seated herself on the grey-lichened rock rudely shaped into the semblance of a chair, on which Malise had been sitting at his mending. The strange maiden looked long at the blue sea deepening in the notches of the sand dunes beneath them. The three men stood before her waiting for her to speak. Each of them knew that lives, dearer and more precious than their own, hung upon what she might have to say.
At last she spoke, in a voice low as the wind when it blows its lightest among the trees:
"You have small cause to trust me or to count me your friend," she said; "but we have that which binds closer than friendship—a common enemy and a common cause of hatred. It were better, therefore, that we should understand one another. I have never lost sight of you since you came to this fatal land of Retz. I have been near you when you knew it not. To accomplish this I have deceived the man who is my taskmaster, swearing to him that in the witch crystal I have seen you depart. And I shall yet deceive him in more deadly fashion."
Sholto could restrain himself no longer.
"Enough," he said roughly; "tell us whether the maidens are alive, and if they are abiding in this Castle of Machecoul."
The Lady Sybilla did not remove her eyes from the red west.
"Thus far they are safe," she said, in the same calm monotone. "This very hour I have come from the White Tower, in which they are confined. But he whom I serve swears by an oath that if you or other rescuers are heard of again in this country, he will destroy them both."
She shuddered as she spoke with a strong revulsion of feeling.
"Therefore, be careful with a great carefulness. Give up all thought of rescuing them directly. Remember what you have been able to accomplish, and that your slightest actions will bring upon those you love a fate of which you little dream."