Part 35 (1/2)

”Woman,” he cried, ”show me cause why I should not slay you. For, by G.o.d, I will, if aught of harm hath overtaken my master. Speak, I bid you, speak quickly, if you have any wish to live.”

But the Lady Sybilla continued to smile--the same dreadful, mocking smile--and somehow Sholto, with his weapon bare and his arm nerved to the thrust, felt himself grow weak and helpless under the stillness and utter pitifulness of her look.

”You would kill me--kill _me_, you say--” the words came low and thrilling forth from lips which were as those of the dead whose chin has not yet been bound about with a napkin, ”ah, would that you could!

But you cannot. Steel will not slay, poison will not destroy, nor water drown Sybilla de Thouars till her work be done!”

Sholto escaped from the power of her eye.

”My master--” he gasped, ”my master--is he well? I pray you tell me.”

Was it a laugh he heard in answer? Rather a sound, not of human mirth but as of a condemned spirit laughing deep underground. Then again the low even voice replied out of the expressionless face.

”Aye, your master is well.”

”Ah, thank G.o.d,” burst forth Sholto, ”he is alive.”

The Lady Sybilla moved her hand this way and that with the gesture of a blind man groping.

”Hush,” she said, ”I only said that he was well. And he is well. As I am already in the place of torment, I know that there is a heaven for those who die as William Douglas died.”

Sholto's cry rang sudden, loud, despairing.

”Dead--dead--Earl William dead--my master dead!”

He dropped the palfrey's rein, which till now he had held. His sword fell unheeded on the turf, and he flung himself down in an agony of boyish grief. But from her white palfrey, sitting still where she was, the maiden watched the paroxysms of his sorrow. She was dry eyed now, and her face was like a mask cut in snow.

Then as suddenly recalling himself, Sholto leaped from the ground, s.n.a.t.c.hed up his sword, and again pa.s.sionately advanced upon the Lady Sybilla.

”You it was who betrayed him,” he cried, pointing the blade at her breast; ”answer if it were not so!”

”It is true I betrayed him,” she answered calmly.

”You whom he loved--G.o.d knows how unworthily--”

”G.o.d knows,” she said simply and calmly.

”You betrayed him to his death. Why then should not I kill you?”

Again she smiled upon him that disarming, hopeless, dreadful smile.

”Because you cannot kill me. Because it were too crowning a mercy to kill me. Because, for three inches of that blade in my heart, I would bless you through the eternities. Because I must do the work that remains--”

”And that work is--?”

”Vengeance!!”

Sholto was silent, trying to piece things together. He found it hard to think. He was but a boy, and experience so strange as that of the Lady Sybilla was outside him. Yet vaguely he felt that her emotion was real, more real perhaps than his own instinct of crude slaying--the desire of the wasp whose nest has been harried to sting the first comer. This woman's hatred was something deadlier, surer, more persistent.

”Vengeance--” he said at last, scarce knowing what he said, ”why should you, who betrayed him, speak of avenging him?”