“Yes, yes--and I--am middle-aged, my dear, and the fire grows cold already.” There was appeal in the older woman’s voice. She needed the girl’s strength, her windy, moor-swept grasp of the big hills and the bigger faith. But Nance was full of her own troubles, and would not heed. “There are dogs left at Windyhough?” she said, moving to the door. “Well, then, let me take them for a scamper. I cannot stay in prison, Lady Royd.” Nance swept out of the parlour, with its faded scent of rose-leaves, donned hat and cloak, and went out in hot rebellion to cool her fever in the nipping wind. She did not guess how she was needed by this frail, discontented woman she had left indoors. Lady Royd, indeed, was human--no more, no less. She could not escape in a moment from the spoiled, settled habits of a lifetime. Sir Jasper had ridden out, and the misery of it had been sudden, agonising. Rupert had blundered home, in his derelict way, with a sprained ankle and a face as white as the hills he loved; and the motherhood in her, untrained, suppressed, had cut through her like a knife. All was desolation here; and she thought of her homeland--of the south country, where winds blew soft and quiet, and lilac bloomed before the leaf-buds had well broken here in Lancashire--and she was hidden by a mist of desperate self-pity. Like Rupert, when he found himself lying in the mud of Langton Road not long ago and heard his horse go galloping down the wind, she thought of death as an easy pathway of escape. Like Rupert, she was not needed here. She was not of the breed that rides out, easy in saddle, on such heroic, foolish errands as Sir Jasper coveted. And yet, when she came to face the matter, she had not courage, either, to die and venture into the cold unknown beyond. She had talked of Will Underwood, of his easy gallantry, and Nance had thought her heartless; yet she had sought only a refuge from the stress of feeling that was too hard for her to bear. She moved up and down the parlour, in her haphazard, useless way. Her husband had ridden out on a venture high and dangerous; and she was setting a cushion to rights here, smoothing the fold of a curtain there, with the intentness of a kitten that sees no farther than its playthings. But under all there was a fierce, insistent heartache, a rebellion against the weakness that hindered her. She began to think of Rupert, to understand, little by little, how near together they were, he and she. Her cowardice seemed lifted away by friendly hands, as she told herself that she would go up and sit at the lad’s bedside. She had known him too little in years past; there was time now to repair mistakes. Simon Foster was watching the master, as he lay in that sleep of sheer exhaustion, following long effort and self-doubt, which was giving him strength and respite before the morrow needed him. Simon heard a low tapping at the door, opened it, saw Lady Royd standing on the threshold.