So then Lady Royd was like a girl in her teens. “Tell me what he said.”
“No, by your leave!” laughed Oliphant. “He said so much, and my time is not my own just now.”
“How—how comforting you are, like Mr. Underwood, who finds always the right word to say.”
“I say it with a difference, I hope,” snapped Oliphant, too weary to hide old dislikes. “I’ve known Mr. Underwood longer than I care to remember. He’s a man I’d trust to fail me whenever the big hunt was up.”
Nance laughed suddenly. The relief was so unexpected and so rousing. “You’ve the gift of knowing men, Mr. Oliphant.”
“There, child!” broke in Lady Royd. “You must come to my years before you talk of understanding men; and even then, if I die in my bed at ninety, I shall never know why we find their daft ways so likeable.”
Oliphant, afraid to hurt a woman always, was seeking for some way to break his news. This wife of Sir Jasper’s was leal and tender, underneath her follies; and her husband was in retreat—in a retreat dangerous to the safety of his body, but more perilous still to the quick and fiery soul that had led him south with Prince Charles Edward.
“He is in good health,” he said slowly—“but the Cause is not.”
“There has been a battle?” She was alert, attentive now.
“Yes—a battle of the Council-chamber, and the Prince was outnumbered. The odds were four to one at least.”