“How--how comforting you are, like Mr. Underwood, who finds always the right word to say.” “I say it with a difference, I hope,” snapped Oliphant, too weary to hide old dislikes. “I’ve known Mr. Underwood longer than I care to remember. He’s a man I’d trust to fail me whenever the big hunt was up.” Nance laughed suddenly. The relief was so unexpected and so rousing. “You’ve the gift of knowing men, Mr. Oliphant.” “There, child!” broke in Lady Royd. “You must come to my years before you talk of understanding men; and even then, if I die in my bed at ninety, I shall never know why we find their daft ways so likeable.” Oliphant, afraid to hurt a woman always, was seeking for some way to break his news. This wife of Sir Jasper’s was leal and tender, underneath her follies; and her husband was in retreat--in a retreat dangerous to the safety of his body, but more perilous still to the quick and fiery soul that had led him south with Prince Charles Edward. “He is in good health,” he said slowly--“but the Cause is not.” “There has been a battle?” She was alert, attentive now. “Yes--a battle of the Council-chamber, and the Prince was outnumbered. The odds were four to one at least.” “I do not understand, sir.” “Nor do I,” he went on, in a quiet heat of rage. “We were cavaliers all, dashing straight through England on the forlorn hope. All depended on looking forward. The chiefs chose just that moment to look back along the road of prudence. It is disastrous, pitiful. I dare not think of it.” “So they--are in retreat?” “That is my message to you. Sir Jasper wishes you to stay here at Windyhough. The march north will go wide of you, through Langton, and you’ll be secure here.” Lady Royd stood very still in the wind that at another time would have made her peevish with longing for her warm south country. Her surface tricks, the casual littleness that had disturbed Sir Jasper’s peace, were blown aside. She was thinking of her husband, of all this Rising meant to him, of his heart-sickness and the hazards that were doubled now. “I would God, sir, that he had bidden me go out to join him in retreat,” she said at last. “I shall be secure here, he thinks? House walls about one, Mr. Oliphant, and food to eat, and wine to drink--are they security? I’m weak and foolish on the sudden--I never understood till now that, where he goes, there is home for me. Shelter? I need none, except his arms about me.”