Peregrine looking across the park to the further reaches of the moorland saw it through a grey mist. The outlook accorded well with his mood. It lacked colour, buoyancy. The future appeared as skeleton as the bare branches of the trees flung against the sullen sky. If Nature’s spring were at hand she hid her face well. Mentally he had no glimpse of her, nor looked to have any. A morbid mood for a man you may well say, yet this was Peregrine’s at the moment.
Turning from the window he scanned the hall, his eyes roving from inlaid floor to domed ceiling, from arched doorway to carved fireplace. The daylight was waning. Shadows loomed in the corners, were flung trembling on the walls by the firelight,—tongued flames among great logs. The light caught the blazon of the house of Belisle among the carving of the overmantel.—On a field argent an inescutcheon azure set within an orle of roses gules.
He looked at it thoughtfully, memory astir. As a child the vivid bit of colour had pleased him as it flashed jewel-like in sunshine or firelight from the sombre shadows of the oak. It pleased his eye now no less, though memory pricking touched the old wound anew.
To him in this pensive mood entered a page, a slim lad in blue and silver. Peregrine engrossed in thought heard no sound till:
“Ahem!” coughed the page.
Peregrine started, looked up, met a pair of grey eyes, mischief lurking in their depths, saw a smooth-skinned, square-faced lad, wide-mouthed, with tip-tilted nose.
“Craving your pardon for breaking in upon your meditations,” quoth the lad with mock respect, “but the Lady Isabel desires your presence.”
Peregrine, returning to matters of the moment, experienced a heart beat. Here was his stage call, and his part by no means well-conned as yet. Save at a distance he had not set eyes upon the Lady Isabel since childhood, sole mistress now of the house of Belisle, since the Lady Clare, her mother, had been laid to rest. The Lord Robert de Belisle, her father, was in Gascony with his King subduing a rebellion.
“And she has sent you to demand my presence?” asked Peregrine lazily, his inward tremor well controlled.
“Since I am here,” grinned the boy.