“What’s he done?”
Miss Girton did not answer at once. Then she pointed to a clump of trees and bushes in the far corner of the field, which was not a big one.
“He took the gun and ran that way—there’s a sunken lane beyond.”
“I’ll go after him,” said Patricia without stopping to think of the consequences, but Agatha Girton caught her arm in a terrible grip.
“Don’t be a little fool, child!” she grated. “That’s death. . . . I lost my head. . . . All he said was: ‘Don’t do it again!’ ”
The woman’s hands were dripping red, and Patricia had to lead her back to the house and up the stairs.
Agatha Girton went to the basin and filled it. She bathed her face, and the water was hideously dyed. Then she turned so that the girl could see, and Patricia had to bite back an involuntary cry of horror, for Miss Girton’s forehead was cut to the bone in the shape of a capital T.
Chapter XIV.
Captain Patricia
“He branded me—the Tiger——” Agatha Girton’s voice was pitched hysterically. “By God . . .”
Her face had become the face of a fiend. Hard and grim it always was—now, with smears of blood from brow to chin and her hair straggling damply over her temples, it was devilish.