See," he added, with genuine excitement labouring in his voice, "see--I am still a young man, yet though I, Gilles de Retz, was born to the princeliest fortune in France, and by marriage added another, they have both been spent well nigh to the last stiver in learning the hidden secrets of the universe.

I am still a young man, I say, but look at my whitening hair, count the deep wrinkles on my forehead, consider my withered cheek.

Have I not tasted all agonies, renounced all delights, and cast aside all scruples that I might win back my youth, and with it the knowledge of good and evil ?" Sybilla went to the door and stood again by the curtain.
"Then you swear by your own God that you will let no evil befall the Scottish maids ?" she said.
"I have told you already--let that suffice!" he replied with sudden coldness; "you know that, like the Master whom I serve, I can keep my word.

I will not harm them, so long as their Scottish kinsfolk come not hither meddling with my purposes.

I have enough of meddlers in France without adding outlanders thereto! I cannot keep a new and permanent danger at grass within my gates." The Lady Sybilla passed through the portal by which she had entered, without adieu or leave-taking of any kind.