“My dear,” she said, “you are so—so oddly staunch, and so unpractical.” And her voice broke, and she could get no farther.
And Rupert smiled gravely, touched her hand, as a courtier might, and limped up toward the house.
Nance stood there awhile, with long thoughts for company. Then, seeking a respite from her mood, she crossed the stables to give a carrot to the fiddle-headed horse; but she got no farther than the corner of the yard. At the stable-door, deaf to all sounds from the outward world and careless of the many windows looking out on them, Simon Foster and Martha were standing hand in hand. Martha’s face was rose-red and smiling, her lover’s full of an amazing foolishness.
“There’s the bonnie, snod lass you are, Martha!” Simon was declaring. “I never thought to see such a day as this. Why didn’t I think of it before, like?”
“Perhaps you were blind, Simon,” put in the other, with a coy upward glance.
Nance retreated out of eye-shot, and for the moment she forgot her troubles. She just laughed until her eyes were wet and her slim little body shook. The scene was so unexpected, so instinct with sheer humour, that the gravest must have yielded to it. Then, as the pressure of the last ill-fated days returned to her, she was filled with a childish wonder that life should be so muddled, so rough-and-tumble, so seemingly disordered. There was Sir Jasper, conquering or defeated, but either way carrying his life in his hands. There was Windyhough itself—house, lands and all—at stake. And yet Simon and the dairymaid, whose discretion now, if ever, should have ripened, were reading folly in each other’s eyes.
She heard Martha cross, singing, to the kitchen, and turned and sought the stables again. She was anxious to learn something which only Simon could tell her; for Rupert was diffident of his own skill at all times, and would not have given her, had she asked it, a true account of his marksmanship.
Simon was brushing down the horse when she went in. He glanced up with grave, stolid innocence, as if he had had no other occupation than this of grooming.
“What has the master learned in these last days?” she asked abruptly. “Does he aim well, Simon?”
“He shapes grandly; but then, he always does when his mind is fair set on a matter. We were in a lonely spot, too, you see, with none to laugh at him while he made his first mistakes.”