“Who is to gain by it all?” murmured Lady Royd, shivering as she drew her wrap about her. “When I’m widowed, and Maurice has gone, too, to Tower Hill--shall I hate these Stuart fools the less? It matters little who is king--so little----” She heard Rupert’s step behind her, turned and regarded him with that half-tolerant disdain which had stood to her for motherhood. Not long ago she had felt a touch of some divine compassion for him, had been astonished by the pain and happiness that pity teaches; but the mood had passed, and he stood to her now as a simpleton so exquisite that he had not strength even to follow the stupid creeds he cherished. She was in no temper to spare him; he was a welcome butt on which to vent her weariness of all things under the sun. They looked at each other, silent, questioning. Big happenings were in the making. The very air of Lancashire these days was instinct with the coming troubles, and folk were restless, ill-at-ease as moor-birds are when thunder comes beating up against the wind. “It is not my fault, mother,” said Rupert brusquely, as if answering some plainly-spoken challenge. “If I had my way, I’d be taking fences, too--but, then, I never had my way.” Lady Royd laughed gently--the frigid, easy laugh that Rupert knew by heart. “A _man_,” she said, halting on the word--“a man makes his way, if he’s to have it. The babies stay at home, and blame the dear God because He will not let them hunt like other men.” Rupert took fire on the sudden, as he had done not long since when he had fought with his brother on the moor. Old indignities were brought to a head. He did not know what he said; but Lady Royd bent her head, as if a moorland tempest beat about her. It seemed as if the whole unrest, the whole passion and heedlessness, of the Stuart battle against circumstance had gathered to a head in this wind-swept courtyard of the old fighting house of Windyhough. And the combatants were a spoilt wife on one hand, on the other a scholar who had not yet found his road in life. The battle should have given food for laughter; yet the scholar wore something of his father’s dignity and spirit, and the woman was slow to admit a mastery that pleased and troubled her. Again there was a silence. The east wind was piping through and through the courtyard, and rain was falling; but on the high moors there were drifts of snow that would not yield to the gusty warmth. All was upset, disordered--rain, and snow, and wind, were all at variance, as if they shared the unrest and the tumult of the times. “You--you hurt me, Rupert,” she said weakly. “I had no right, mother,” he broke in, contrite. “Of course I am the heir--and I was never strong, as you had wished--and--and I spoke in heat.” “I like your heat, boy,” she said unexpectedly. “Oh, you were right, were right! You never had a chance.”