United States or Bahamas ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But the day is not far distant when I shall have my pretty spitfire clinging about these old trembling knees, and beseeching me whom you despise, as a woman either to save you or kill you you will not care which. As a woman! Ha! ha! How long is it since La Meffraye was a woman? Was she ever rocked in a cradle?
"And La Meffraye," he went on, "has she arrived?" "La Meffraye has arrived," they said; "all goes fortunately." "Good!" said Gilles de Retz, and shedding his furred monkish cloak carelessly from off his shoulders, he went within. Poitou and Gilles de Sillé both reached to catch the mantle ere it fell. As they did so their hands met and touched.
"Sweet and fair is the air of the evening," purred behind them a low voice that of the woman who was called La Meffraye. "It brings the colour to the cheeks of the young. But I am old and wise, and I would advise that two maids so fair should not look down on the sports of the youths, lest they hear and see more than is fitting for such innocent eyes."
As the maidens stood on the marble square La Meffraye went to the door and called certain words within, conveying some message which Laurence could not hear.
When Malise thrust forward his torch, lo! there, extended on the couch to which they had carried him two hours before, lay the yet twitching body of Cæsar the cripple with his throat well nigh bitten away. But La Meffraye was nowhere to be seen.
Only Sholto kept his suspicion edged and pointed, and resolved that he would not sleep that night, but watch till the dawn the things which might befall in the house on the forest's border. Yet it was conspicuously to Sholto that La Meffraye directed most of her blandishments.
La Meffraye laughed a low, cackling laugh, and in the act showed the four long eye-teeth which were the sole remaining dental equipment of her mouth. "Oh, Great Barran " she chuckled, "listen to the pretty fool! Our brother will do this our brother will do that. Our brother will lick the country of Retz as clean as a dog licks a platter.
These and much else La Meffraye pressed upon them till she had completely won over the Lord James, and even Malise, easy natured like most very strong men, was taken by the sympathetic conversation and gracious kindliness of the wife of poor afflicted Cæsar Martin of Saint Philbert.
As he looked he saw La Meffraye come to the door and set her face within, like some bird of night, hideous and foul. To them, all clad in a priest's robe of flame-coloured velvet, succeeded the Lord of Retz himself.
But the cripple lay back on the settle where Sholto had placed him, his lips white and gluey. And as he lay he muttered audibly, "La Meffraye! La Meffraye! Oh, what will become of poor Cæsar Martin this night!" It was a strange night that which the three Scots spent in the little house standing back from the street of Saint Philbert on the gloomy edges of the forest of Machecoul.
Word Of The Day