"Dear Messire," she said sweetly and almost confidently, "you have a little girl of your own. I know, for I have played with her. I love her. Therefore you will not hurt us. I am sure you will not hurt us. You are going to send us back in a ship to our own country, because it is lonely here where Maud and I know no one!"
The marshal smiled upon her his inhuman inscrutable smile. He leaned against a pillar of strangely twisted design, and contemplated the two victims at his ease.
"Life is sweet to you, is it not?" he said at last; "you are truly happy, being young, and so have no need to be made young again."
"Oh, but I am very old," cried the Maid, gaining some confidence from the quiet of his voice, "I am nearly eight years old. And our Maudie here, she is—oh, a dreadful age! She is very, very old!"
"You would not like to die?" suggested Gilles de Retz, with a certain soft insinuation.
"Oh, no," said Margaret Douglas, "I am going to live long and long—till every one in the world loves me. I am going to help every one to get what he most desires. And you know I can, for I shall be very rich. And if what they say is true, and I am Princess of Galloway, I shall marry and be a very great lady. But I shall never marry any one who is not a Douglas."
The marshal nodded.
"I do not think that you shall marry any one who is not a Douglas!" he said, with a certain grave and not discourteous irony in his tones.
"Yes," the little Maid went on. She had lost all fear in the very act of speech. "Yes, and Maud, she is going to marry Sholto—and they will be very happy, for they love each other so. I know it, for she told me to-night just before you sent for us to come to your feast. That was kind of you to remember us, though it was past bed-time. But now, good marshal, you will send us back, will you not? Now, look kind to-night. You will be glad afterwards that you were good to two maids who never harmed you, but are ready to love you if you prove kind to them."
"Hush, Margaret," said Maud Lindesay. "It is useless to speak such words to such a man."