Nance heard the delicate irony as he spoke of the defences, saw him limp into the house. And some new feeling came to her. It was not pity; it was a strange, fugitive pride in the courage that could keep so harassed a spirit under control. She had been harsh and bitter, had wounded him because she needed any outlet from these pent-up days at Windyhough; and he had gathered his little strength together, had laughed at himself, had gone to the routine of guarding a house that did not need defence.
Nance was ashamed to-night. Her reliance and high spirits had deserted her; and for that reason she saw nearer to the heart of life. She felt that a great gentleman, marred in the making, had gone into this house of fine traditions. She asked, with an entreaty passionate and wilful as herself, why Rupert had been condemned to sit at home among the women, when so little more was needed to shape him to the comely likeness of a man.
And then she thought of Will Underwood, who had strength and grace of body, remembered with obstinate zeal her faith that he had ridden on some desperate business of the Rising, though men doubted him. And she was in the turmoil of first love again.
The next day, and the next, she missed Rupert from the house. He would go his rounds punctiliously after breakfast, and then would take a crust and a piece of cheese in his pocket and limp up into the hills. She thought that he was feeding his dreams, as of old, on the high winds and the high legends of the heath; and she missed him, with a sense of loneliness that would not let her rest.
Simon Foster, too, was absent these days, and Lady Royd grew petulant. Though her husband was like to lose his head, and England was stirred by that throb of coming battle which is like thunder-heat before the rain and lightning come, she was troubled because Simon did not perform his indoor duties. For she, who had little guidance of herself, and therefore less control of serving-folk, was exact in her demand that all the details of the house should be well-ordered.
“I thought Simon at least tied by rheumatism to the house,” she wailed to Nance, on the second day of absence; “but he’s like all our men--off to the Rising, or off to the fields; any excuse will serve, it seems, when women feel their indoor loneliness.”