A girl came in, thrusting aside the curtain, and, for the space of a moment, holding it outstretched with an arm gowned in pure white before dropping it with a rustle of heavy silken fabric upon the ground.
The Marshal de Retz wrote on without appearing to be conscious of any new presence in his private chamber.

The girl stood regarding him, with eyes that blazed with an intent so deadly and a hate so all-possessing that the yellow treachery in those of Astarte the she-wolf appeared kind and affectionate by contrast.
At the girl's entrance that shaggy beast had raised herself upon her fore paws, and presently she gave vent to a low growl, half of distrust and half of warning, which at once reached the ears of the busy worker.
Gilles de Retz looked up quickly, and, catching sight of the Lady Sybilla, with a sweep of his hand he thrust his manuscript into an open drawer of the escritoire.
"Ah, Sybilla," he said, leaning back in his chair with an air of easy familiarity, "you are more sparing of your visits to me than of yore.
To what do I owe the pleasure and honour of this one ?" The girl eyed him long before answering.

She stood statue-still by the curtain at the entrance of the apartment, ignoring the chair which the marshal had offered her with a bow and a courteous wave of his hand.
"I have come," she made answer at last, in the deep even tones which she had used before the council of the traitors at Stirling, "to demand from you, Messire Gilles de Retz, what you mean to do with the little Margaret Douglas and her companion, whom you wickedly kidnapped from their own country and have brought with you in your train to France ?" "I have satisfaction in informing you," replied the marshal, suavely, "that it is my purpose to dispose of both these agreeable young ladies entirely according to my own pleasure." The girl caught at her breast with her hand, as if to stay a sudden spasm of pain.
"Not at Tiffauges--" she gasped, "not at Champtoce ?" The marshal leaned back, enjoying her terror, as one tastes in slow sips a rare brand of wine.

He found the flavour of her fears delicious.
"No, Sybilla," he replied at last, "neither at Champtoce nor yet at Tiffauges--for the present, that is, unless some of your Scottish friends come over to rescue them out of my hands." "How, then, do you intend to dispose of them ?" she urged.
"I shall send them to your puking sister and her child, hiding their heads and sewing their samplers at Machecoul.

What more can you ask?
Surely the young and fair are safe in such worthy society, even if they may chance to find it a little dull." "How can I believe him, or know that for once he will forego his purposes of hell ?" Sybilla murmured, half to herself.
The Marshal de Retz smiled, if indeed the contraction of muscles which revealed a line of white teeth can be called by that name.