"Does it matter at all what I answer?" asked the Earl, succinctly.

"I do not bandy words with you," said the Chancellor; "I order you to
make your pleading, or stand within your danger."

"And yet," said William Douglas, gravely, "words are all that you dare
bandy with me. Even if I honoured you by laying aside my dignities and
consented to break a lance with you, you would refuse to afford me
trial by battle, which is the right of every peer accused."

"'Tis a barbarous custom," said the Chancellor; "we will try your case
upon its merit."

The Earl laughed a little mocking laugh.

"It will be somewhat safer," said he, "but haste you and get the sham
done with. I plead nothing. I do not even tell you that you lie. What
doth one expect of a gutter-dog but that it should void the garbage it
hath devoured? But I do ask you, Marshal de Retz, as a brave soldier
and the representative of an honourable King, what you have done with
the Lady Sybilla?"

The Marshal de Retz smiled--a smile so chill, cruel, hard, that the
very soldiers on guard, seeing it, longed to slay him on the spot.

"May I, in return, ask my Lord Earl of Douglas and Duke of Touraine
what is that to him?" he said, with sneering emphasis upon the titles.

"It matters to me," replied William Douglas, boldly, "more than life,
and almost as much as honour. The Lady Sybilla did me the grace to