“I have given you my orders already,” said Isabel harshly.
Roger March, grim-faced, led Peregrine away.
The Count looked at Isabel. Meeting her eyes very full he smiled mockingly.
CHAPTER XI
OUTCASTE
THUS a second time we see Peregrine dismissed the Castle.
Exceeding sore in body, yet infinitely more sore in mind, he lay in a wood some two miles or so from the spot where the last blow had fallen upon him. Half fainting he had dragged himself thither. Roger March had been in no mind to see light punishment dealt out.
For a time a sort of stupor fell on him, dulling in part the pain of body and soul. A sick man half delirious he felt himself, tortured by very evil dreams. Mocking faces surrounded him, and in their midst one face very cold, looking at him with eyes full of scorn and hatred. Then, for a while, the lapse of years escaping him, he believed himself a child burying a hot face in his mother’s gown, weeping out his woes in her lap. Later he found the lap to be that of Mother Earth, her gown the cool green of the moss against his cheek. Turning his head he saw the green-leaved branches above him, had a glimpse of summer blue sky. This brought him back to the present. He sat up feeling the swelled stiffness of his back and limbs.
Some hundred yards or so before him his eye caught the glint of water among the trees. He remembered that he was very thirsty. He rose stiffly to his feet, made his way towards the pond. It lay clear as a mirror, reflecting the trees.
Peregrine, kneeling at the margin, bent towards it, saw a haggard-faced Jester looking up at him. For a moment startled by his own reflection he drew back; then laughed. Hard-eyed he looked at his own image; on a sudden saw himself Jester to Fate. Here was his rôle with a vengeance. He looked at his own face again, and with new interest, grinned at it a moment very diabolically. The next, he dashed his fist in the water. The reflection shivered to a thousand sparkling fragments.