Rupert welcomed the other’s guarded prophecy, for to-night he needed hope. And he fell again to looking through the loophole on to the empty, moonlit courtyard; and suddenly, from the far side of the house, he heard Nance’s voice again, as she tried to sing a little of Lady Royd’s heart-sickness away. The voice, so low and strong and charitable, the thought of her face, her brown, waving hair, her candid eyes, struck Rupert with intolerable pain and sense of loss. He recalled the years when he should have been up and doing, winning his spurs like other men. His shy, half-ironic, half-scholarly aloofness from the life of every day showed as a thing contemptible. He magnified his shortcomings, accused himself of cowardice, not physical cowardice, but moral. All these years, while his love for Nance was growing, he should have been conquering the weakness that separated him from his fellows, should have been climbing the steep path of hardship, training himself to be strong as his passion for Nance Demaine. To-night, as he thought of these things, he understood, to the last depth, this love that possessed him utterly. It was a soldier’s love, a strong man’s. It was content to forego, content to watch and guard and work, so long as Nance was happy, though to himself it brought tumult and unrest enough. The keen, man’s longing to claim her for his own, to take her out of reach of such as Will Underwood, had given him many an evil day and night; but through it all, unconquerable, had come that strong, chivalrous desire to keep her feet from the puddles and the mire of life, to serve her hand and foot, and afterwards, since he was needful to her in no other way, to stand by and watch her happiness from some shadowed corner. There was all his life’s training, all the tenor of his long, boyhood’s thoughts, in this fine regard he brought Squire Demaine’s daughter. There was, too, the Stuart training that had deepened the old Royd instincts given him at birth. It was, in part, the devotion he would have given a queen if he had been her cavalier; and, through it all, there went that silver skein of haplessness and abnegation bravely borne which is in the woof and weft of all things Stuart. He knew the unalterable strength and beauty of his love; and, with a sudden overmastering shame, he saw himself--himself, unfit to join the Rising, useless and a stay-at-home, beside this other picture of his high, chivalrous regard for Nance. He laughed bitterly. It was grotesque, surely, that so fine a passion should be in charge of such a weakling. And then, from the midst of his humiliation and pain, he plucked courage and new hope. It was his way, as it had been his father’s. If this dream of his came true--if the retreat swept up this way, as Simon hoped, and gave work into his hands--he would give Nance deeds at last. “The night is not so empty as it was, Simon,” he said, turning sharply. “We’ll patrol the house.” CHAPTER XII THE GALLOP