Behind her, Rupert and Nance Demaine were standing, facing each other with mute dismay. Without knowing that they were eavesdroppers, they had heard Lady Royd’s voice, with its half-pleasant note of querulousness, and the rider’s low, tired answers to her questions. And they had not heeded overmuch--for each was busy with the ill news brought from Derby--until, merciless, exact, they heard across the courtyard Oliphant’s rough, “And if he’d stayed? You would have liked your tame cat about the house?” Nance had looked sharply up at Rupert, had seen his soldierly, straight air desert him, and she understood. “My dear,” she said, broken up by sharp sympathy, “he--he did not mean that you----” “So you, too, fit the fool’s cap on? I’m going indoors, Nance--to my post, to find Simon Foster.” He was hard hit; and the strength of the fathers stiffened his courage, now in the hour of shame, so that he was almost gay. And Nance could make nothing of this mood of his, because she was born a woman, and he a man. “You always brought your troubles to me, Rupert,” she pleaded, laying a hand on his sleeve. “Yes, till they grew too big for you. And now--why, Nance, I think I’ll shoulder them myself.” He seemed to stand far away, not needing her. It seemed, rather, in this moment of despair, that she went in need of him. Will Underwood had deserted her, had trodden her first love underfoot; she was bruised and tired; and the Rising news was wintry as her loneliness. Rupert, his voice firm again, turned at the porch. “Good-night, Nance,” he said, with the gaiety that hurt her. “You may sleep well--the tame cat guards the house, my dear.” There was bitterness and heartache about this house of Windyhough. The wind would not be still, and men’s sorrows would not rest. And the stark moor above lay naked to the wintry moon, and shivered underneath her coverlet of sleet. Nance, by and by, followed Rupert indoors, and went into the parlour, with its scent of last year’s rose-leaves, its pretty, useless ornaments, its air of stifled luxury, warring with the ruddy gloaming light that strode down from the moors and peeped through every window, as if to spy out the shams within doors.