He turned impatiently from the upper window, not guessing that his father had carried the picture of his tired face with him to the meet. With some thought of getting up into the moor, to still his restlessness, he went down the stair and out into the courtyard. Lady Royd, who had not lain easy in her bed this morning, was standing there. Some stronger call than luxury and well-being had bidden her get up and steal into the windy, nipping air, to watch her men ride out. She was late, as she was for all appointments, and some bitter loneliness had taken hold of her when she found them gone. She had never been one of these gusty, unswerving people here in Lancashire, and their strength was as foreign to her as their weaknesses. Until her marriage with the impulsive northern lover who had come south to the wooing and had captured her girl’s fancy, she had lived in the lowlands, where breezes played for frolic only; and the bleakness of these hills had never oppressed her as it did this morning. She forgot the swift and magic beauty that came with the late-won spring, forgot how every slope and dingle of this northern country wakened under the sun’s touch, how the stark and empty moor grew rich with colour, how blackbird and lavrock, plover and rook and full-throated thrush made music wild and exquisite under the blue, happy sky. For the present, the wind was nipping; on the higher hill-crests snow lay like a burial-shroud; her husband and the younger son she idolised were riding out to-morrow on a perilous road because they had listened to that haunting, unhappy melody which all the Stuarts had the gift of sounding. Lady Royd could not see beyond. Her faith was colder than the hills which frightened her, emptier than this winter-time she hated. She had not once captured the quiet, resolute note that sounded through her husband’s conduct of affairs. Let the wind whistle its keenest under a black and sullen sky, Sir Jasper knew that he was chilled, as she did; but he knew, too, that summer would follow, blithe and full of hay-scents, fuller, riper in warmth and well-being, because the months of cold had fed its strength. She chose to believe that he was playing with a fine, romantic sense of drama, in following the Prince, that he was sacrificing Maurice to the same misplaced zeal. Yet hour by hour and day by day of their long companionship, he had made it plain, to a comrade less unwilling, that he had followed a road marked white at every milestone by a faith that would not budge, an obedience to the call of honour that was instinctive, instant, as the answer of a soldier to his commanding officer. If all went amiss with this Rising, if he gave his life for a lost cause, it did not matter greatly to Sir Jasper; for he was sure that in one world or another, a little sooner or a little later, he would see that Restoration whose promise shone like the morning star above the staunch, unbending hills of Lancashire.