“To the commander?” he asked. “I am to take it to the commander?”
I shook my head. “Read it.”
He stared at it vacantly, turning it now this way, now that.
“Did you forget how to read when you forgot all else?” I said sternly.
He read, and the color rushed into his face.
“It is your freedom,” I said. “You are no longer man of mine. Begone, sirrah!”
He crumpled the paper in his hand. “I was mad,” he muttered.
“I could almost believe it,” I replied. “Begone!”
After a moment he went. Sitting still in my place, I heard him heavily and slowly leave the room, descend the step at the door, and go out into the night.
A door opened, and Mistress Jocelyn Percy came into the great room, like a sunbeam strayed back to earth. Her skirt was of flowered satin, her bodice of rich taffeta; between the gossamer walls of her French ruff rose the whitest neck to meet the fairest face. Upon her dark hair sat, as lightly as a kiss, a little pearl-bordered cap. A color was in her cheeks and a laugh on her lips. The rosy light of the burning pine caressed her,—now dwelling on the rich dress, now on the gold chain around the slender waist, now on rounded arms, now on the white forehead below the pearls. Well, she was a fair lady for a man to lay down his life for.