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Updated: May 1, 2025
A vague inexpressible fear possessed him. He lay watching the red unequal glow thrown upwards from the embers, and through the wide opening in the roof he could discern the twinkling of a star. Within the chamber of La Meffraye there was silence. Sholto could not even hear the heavy breathing of Cæsar Martin. The silence was complete. Suddenly, from far away, there came up the howling of a wolf.
Then you will not thrust aside La Meffraye. Then you shall cry and none shall pity. Then she will spurn you from her knees."
Then the old cripple, more than ever bent upon his stick, but nevertheless chuckling to himself all the way, preceded them into the house. "Ah, she is clever," he muttered; "she thinks her demon tells her everything. But even La Meffraye will not know where I have hidden that beautiful gold." So he sniggered senilely to himself between his fits of coughing.
It opened, and the hideous face of La Meffraye looked in upon them with a cackle of fiendish laughter. "Come, sweet maidens," she cried gleefully, as the frightened girls clasped each other closer upon the bed, "come away. The Marshal de Retz calls for you. He hath need of your beauty to grace his feast. The lights of the banquet burn in his hall. See the fire of burning shine out upon the night.
The usual signs of approaching high saturnalia at Machecoul had not been wanting. Early in the morning La Meffraye had been seen hovering like an unclean bird of prey about the playing grounds of the village children at Saint Benoit on the edges of the forest.
"Nay," answered La Meffraye, standing before them with her eyes shrewdly fixed upon the face of the speaker, "I have heard of none such. Yet it may well be, for the marshal is very fond of the society of the young, even as I am myself. He has many boy singers in his choir, maidens also for his religious processions.
The morn will soon be here, and it must not find our bodies unrested or our eyes unrefreshed." La Meffraye showed her guests where to make their beds in the outer room of the cottage, which they did by moving the bench back and stretching themselves with their heads to the wall and their feet to the fire.
And the affrighted and heart-sick girls turned them about to see the Lady Sybilla stand fair and pale at the head of the turret stair which opened out upon the roof of the White Tower. At this interruption the eyes of La Meffraye seemed to burn with a fresher fury, and the green light in them shone as shines an emerald stone held up to the sun.
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