"We can at least encourage the woman and then hold her as an hostage." The three Scots were standing to receive their guest when the Lady Sybilla rode up.

Her face had lost none of the pale sadness which marked it when Sholto last saw her, and though the look of utter agony had passed away, the despair of a soul in pain had only become more deeply printed upon it.
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.