“Rupert said that?” asked Sir Jasper gently. “Gad! I’m proud of him. He’ll come to soldiery one day.” “By mooning in the library--by roaming the moors at all hours of the day and night--is that the way men learn to fight?” Sir Jasper was cool and debonair again. “Men learn to fight as the good God teaches them, my lady. We have no part in that. As for Rupert--I tell you the lad is staunch and leal. He was bred a Christian gentleman, after all, and breed tells--it tells in the long run, Agnes, though all the fools in Lancashire go making mouths at Rupert.” He strode up and down the hall, with the orderly impatience that she knew. And then he told the Rising news; and she ran towards him, and could not come too close into his arms, and made confession, girlish in its simplicity, that she, who cared little for her son, loved her husband better than her pride. “You’ll not go? It is a mad Rising--here with the Georges safe upon the throne. You need not go, at your age. Let younger men bear the brunt of it, if they’ve a mind for forlorn hopes.” He put her arms away from him, though it helped and heartened him to know that, in some queer way, she loved him. “At any age one serves the Prince, wife. I’m bidden--that is all.” Lady Royd glanced keenly at her husband. She had been spoilt and wilful, counting wealth and ease as her goal in life; but she was sobered now. Sir Jasper had said so little; but in his voice, in the look of his strong, well-favoured face, there was something that overrode the shams of this world. He was a simple-minded gentleman, prepared for simple duty; and, because she knew that he was unbreakable, her old wilfulness returned. “For my sake, stay!” she pleaded. “You are--my dear, you do not know how much you are to me.” He held her at arm’s length, looking into her face. Her eyes were pixie-like--radiant, full of sudden lights and fugitive, light-falling tears. So had he seen her, six-and-twenty years before, when he brought her as a bride to Windyhough. For the moment he was unnerved. She was so young in her blandishment, so swift and eager a temptation. It seemed that, by some miracle, they two were lad and lass again, needing each other only, and seeing the world as a vague and sunlit background to their happiness. “Ah, you’ll not go!” she said softly. “I knew you would not.” “Not go?” He stood away from her, crossed to the window that gave him a sight of the last sunset-red above the heath. “You are childish, Agnes,” he said sharply. “So are all women, when--when they care. I need you here--need you--and you will not understand.” Sir Jasper laughed, with a gentleness, a command of himself, that did not date from yesterday. “And a man, when he cares--he cares for his honour first--because it is his wife’s. Agnes, you did not hear me, surely. I said that the Prince commands me.” “And _I_ command you. Choose between us.”