“Oh, you’re querulous, and so am I,” said the other, with a shrewd glance at the girl’s face. “If our men could see us now--our men who fight for us--they would be astonished, Nance. We’re so little like their dreams of us. You in a bad temper, and I ready to cry if a mouse threatened me, and our men, God bless them! thinking only of old England, and our beautiful bright eyes, Nance--your eyes and mine--just red, my dear, if you’ll forgive me, with the tears men think our luxury.” Nance, made up of hill-rides, and free winds, and charity, looked quietly at Lady Royd, read some fellowship in the pretty, faded face. “I have--a few griefs of my own,” she said, with the sudden penitence that was always like April’s sunshine after rain. “I forgot that you had yours.” The older woman grasped Nance’s hand, and held it, and looked into the young, faithful eyes. She needed youth just now; for she felt that she was growing old. “Nance, he is out with the Rising. And they’ve retreated. And--and, girl, when you come to my age, and have a husband and a son who will go fighting for high causes--oh, you’ll know, Nance, how one’s heart aches till it goes near to breaking.” “You will tell me,” said Nance, laying a gentle hand on the other’s arm. And Lady Royd looked gravely at her for a moment, through the tears that lay thick about the babyish, blue eyes. And then she laughed--with gallantry and tiredness, as Rupert had laughed not long ago when he listened to Simon Foster’s tale of Huntercomb Fair. “My dear, I should be glad to tell you--if I could. How should I find words? I’ve loved him for more than six-and-twenty years, Nance, and guessed as much long since, but was never sure of it till he rode out. And now--he’s in the thick of danger, and I cannot go to him.” “He is happy,” said Nance, with stormy wish to help this woman, stormy grasp of the courage taught her by the hills. “Our men are bred that way; they are happiest when they’re like to lose their necks--in the hunting-field, or on Tower Hill, or wherever the good God wills. I think Sir Jasper is happier than you or I.” “That is true.” Lady Royd made the most of her slender height. She was learning the way of royalty at last, after Sir Jasper had tried patiently to teach it to her all these years. “And I? My heart is breaking, Nance; but I’ll carry my wounds as--as he would carry his. They’re in retreat, I tell you, and--and we shall not meet again, I think--I, and the husband whom I love.” “Oh, you will meet--and--and, if not----” said Nance, with that nice handling of high faith and common sense which made her charm so human and so likeable--“you love him, and his one thought is for you; and Rupert would tell you that death is so little, after all.”