‘That is not what I mean, Keziah. What I can’t believe is that you could make up your mind to—marry the man who is rich. What! leave the other whom you love, and marry one whom you don’t love! However rich he was, you would be miserable; and he, poor fellow! would be miserable too.’

‘Oh, Miss Anne, that’s what I am afraid of!’ cried the girl; ‘that’s what I’m always saying to myself. I could face it if it were only me—(for it’s a great thing to be well off, Miss Anne, for us as have been so poor all our lives); but Jim will be miserable; that is what I always say. But what can I do? tell me what can I do.’

‘I will tell you what you can do. Be faithful to Jim, Keziah; be faithful to him whatever anyone says. Marry him, not the other. That is the only thing to do.’

‘Marry him? But how can I marry him when he’s enlisted and gone off for a soldier, and maybe I’ll never see him more?’

‘Enlisted!’ said Anne, for the moment taken aback; but she recovered quickly, seeing the easiest way out of it. ‘Soldiers are allowed to buy themselves out. I would rather a great deal do without a dress and give you the money for his discharge. Anything would be better than to see you sacrifice yourself—sell yourself. Oh, you could not do it! You must not think of it any more.’

‘It’s not me, Miss Anne,’ said Keziah, mournfully; ‘it’s Mr. Saymore and aunt.’

‘Old Saymore! is it old Saymore?’ Anne did not know how to speak with ordinary patience of such a horrible transaction. ‘Keziah, this cannot be put up with for a moment. If they frighten you, I will speak to them. Old Saymore! No, Keziah; it is Jim you must marry, since you love him: and no one else.’

‘Yes, Miss Anne,’ said Keziah, very doubtfully; ‘but I don’t know,’ she added, ‘whether Jim wanted me—to marry him. You see he is young, and he had nothing but his weekly wage, when he was in work; and I don’t even know if he wants to buy his discharge. Men is very queer,’ said the girl, shaking her head with profound conviction, ‘and keeping company’s not like marrying. Them that haven’t got you want you, and them that can have you for the asking don’t ask. It is a funny world and men are queer; things is not so straightforward before you to do one or another as you think, Miss Anne.’

‘Then, at all events, there is one thing you can always do—for it depends upon yourself alone. Marry no one, but be faithful, Keziah; faithful to Jim if you love him; and, you may be sure, things will come right at the last.’

‘I don’t know, Miss Anne,’ said Keziah, shaking her head; ‘it seems as if it ought to; but it don’t always, as far as I can see. There’s ladies, and real ladies, aunt says, as has just the same before them; for if the man you like hasn’t a penny, Miss Anne, and other folks has plenty, what, even if you’re a lady, is a girl to do?’

‘You can always be faithful, whatever happens,’ cried Anne, holding her head high; ‘that depends only on yourself.’

‘If your folks will let you alone, Miss Anne.’ Keziah had dried her tears, and Anne’s confidence had given her a little courage; but still she felt that she had more experience of the world than her mistress, and shook her little head.

‘What can your “folks” do, Keziah? You have only to hold fast and be true,’ cried Anne. Her eyes shone with the faith and constancy that were in her. The very sight of her was inspiring. She looked like a woman who might have rallied an army, standing up with her head high, defying all danger. ‘They may make you unhappy, they may take everything from you; but only yourself can change you. The whole world cannot do anything to you if you remain true, and stand fast——’

‘Oh, Miss Anne, if we was all like you!’ said the girl, admiring but despondent. But just then the dressing-bell began to ring, and poor Keziah was recalled to her duties. She flew to the drawers and wardrobes to lay out the miscellaneous articles that were needed—the evening shoes, the ribbons, and little ornaments Anne was to wear. Then she lingered for a moment before fulfilling the same office for Rose. ‘Don’t you think, Miss Anne,’ she said, ‘if it comes to that at the end: don’t you think I mind for myself. I hope as I’ll do my duty, whoever the man may be. I’m not one to stick to my own way when I see as I can’t get it. It isn’t that I’m that bent on pleasing myself——’

‘But Keziah, Keziah!’ cried Anne, provoked, distressed, and disappointed, ‘when this is what you are thinking of, it is your duty to please yourself.’

‘The Bible don’t say so, Miss Anne,’ said Keziah, with a little air of superior wisdom as she went away.

This discussion made the most curious break in Anne’s thoughts; instead of spending the half-hour in blessed solitude, reading over Cosmo’s last letter or thinking over some of his last words, how strange it was to be thus plunged into the confused and darkling ways of another world, so unlike her own! To the young lady it was an unalterable canon of faith that marriage was only possible where love existed first. Such was the dogma of the matter in England, the first and most important proviso of the creed of youth, contradicted sometimes in practice, but never shaken in doctrine. It was this that justified and sanctified all the rest, excusing even a hundred little departures from other codes, little frauds and compromises which lost all their guilt when done for the sake of love. But here was another code which was very different, in which the poor little heroine was ashamed to have it thought that, so far as concerned herself, love was the first thing in question. Keziah felt that she could do her duty whoever the man might be; it was not any wish to please herself that made her reluctant. Anne’s first impulse of impatience, and annoyance, and disgust at such a view of the question, and at the high ground on which it was held, transported her for the moment out of all sympathy with Keziah. No wonder, she thought, that there was so much trouble and evil deep down below the surface when that was how even an innocent girl considered the matter. But by-and-by Anne’s imagination got entangled with the metaphysics of the question, and the clear lines of the old undoubting dogmatism became less clear. ‘The Bible don’t say so.’ What did the Bible say? Nothing at all about it; nothing but a rule of mutual duty on the part of husbands and wives; no guidance for those who were making the first great decision, the choice that must mean happiness or no happiness to their whole lives. But the Bible did say that one was not to seek one’s own way, nor care to please one’s self, as Keziah said. Was the little maid an unconscious sophist in her literal adoption of these commands? or was Anne to blame, who, in this point of view, put aside the Bible code altogether, without being aware that she did so? Deny yourself! did that mean that you were to consent to a mercenary union when your heart was against it? Did that mean that you might profane and dishonour yourself for the sake of pleasing others? Keziah thought so, taking the letter as her rule; but how was Anne to think so? Their theories could not have been more different had the width of the world been between them.

And then the story of Heathcote Mountford glanced across her mind. This was what had happened to him. His Italian princess, though she loved him, had done her duty, had married somebody of her own rank, had left the man she loved to bear the desertion as he could. Was it the women who did this, Anne asked herself, while the men were true? It was bitter to the girl to think so, for she was full of that visionary pride—born both of the chivalrous worship and the ceaseless jibes of which they have been the objects—which makes women so sensitive to all that touches their sex. A flush of shame as visionary swept over her. If this cowardly weakness was common to women, then no wonder that men despised them; then, indeed, they must be inferior creatures, incapable of real nobleness, incapable of true understanding. For a moment Anne felt that she despised and hated her own kind; to be so poor, so weak, so miserable; to persuade the nobler, stronger being by their side that they loved him, and then weakly to abandon him; to shrink away from him for fear of a parent’s scolding or the loss of money, or comfort, or luxury! What indignation Anne poured forth upon these despicable creatures! and to call it duty! she cried within herself. When you can decide that one side is quite in the wrong, even though it be your own side, there is consolation in it; then all is plain sailing in the moral element, and no complication disturbs you. Though she felt it bitter, and humiliating, and shameful, Anne clung to this point of view. She was barely conscious, in the confused panorama of that unknown world that spread around her, of some doubtful points on which the light was not quite so simple and easy to identify. ‘Those that can have you for the asking don’t ask you,’ Keziah said: and she had not been sure that her lover wanted her to marry him, though she believed he would be miserable if she abandoned him. And Heathcote Mountford, though he seemed to be so faithful, had never been rich enough to make inconstancy possible. These were the merest specks of shadow on the full light in which one side of her picture was bathed. But yet they were there.

This made an entire change in Anne’s temper and disposition for the evening. Her mind was full of this question. When she went downstairs she suffered a great many stories to be told in her presence to which, on previous occasions, she would have turned a deaf ear; and it was astonishing how many corresponding cases seem to exist in society—the women ‘doing their duty’ weakly, giving in to the influence of some mercenary parent, abandoning love and truth for money and luxury; the men withdrawing embittered, disgusted, no doubt to jibe at women, perhaps to hate them; to sink out of constancy into misanthropy, into the rusty loneliness of the old bachelor. Her heart grew sad within her as she pondered. Was it to be her fate to vindicate all women, to show what a woman could do? but for the moment she felt herself too deeply disgusted with her sex to think of defending them from any attack. To be sure, there was that shadow in her picture, that fluctuation, that uncomfortable balance of which she was just conscious—Jim who, perhaps, would not have wanted to marry Keziah, though he loved her; and the others who could not afford to commit any imprudence, who could marry only when there was a fortune on what Mrs. Mountford would call ‘the other side.’ Anne felt herself cooped in, in the narrowest space, not knowing where to turn; ‘who could marry only when there was money on the other side.’ Why, this had been said of Cosmo! Anne laughed to herself, with an indignation and wrath, slightly, very slightly, tempered by amusement. Where Cosmo was concerned she could not tolerate even a smile.

CHAPTER XIII.

HEATHCOTE MOUNTFORD.

The visit of the unknown cousin had thus become a very interesting event to the whole household, though less, perhaps, to its head than to anyone else. Mr. Mountford flattered himself that he had nothing of a man’s natural repugnance towards his heir. Had that heir been five-and-twenty, full of the triumph and confidence of youth, then indeed it might have been difficult to treat him with the same easy tolerance; for, whatever may be the chances in your own favour, it would be difficult to believe that a young man of twenty-five would not, one way or the other, manage to outlive yourself at sixty. But Heathcote Mountford had lived, his kinsman thought, very nearly as long as himself; he had not been a young man for these dozen years. It was half a lifetime since there had been that silly story about the Italian lady. Nothing can be more easy than to add on a few years to the vague estimate of age which we all form in respect to our neighbours; the fellow must be forty if he was a day; and between forty and sixty after all there is so little difference, especially when he of forty is an old bachelor of habits perhaps not too regular or virtuous. Mr. Mountford was one of the people who habitually disbelieve in the virtue of their neighbours. He had never been a man about town, a frequenter of the clubs, in his own person; and there was, perhaps, a spice of envy in the very bad opinion which he entertained of such persons. A man of forty used up by late hours and doubtful habits is not younger—is as a matter of fact older—than a respectable married man of sixty taking every care of himself, and regular as clockwork in all his ways. Therefore he looked with good-humoured tolerance on Heathcote, at whose rights under the entail he was almost inclined to laugh. ‘I shall see them all out,’ he said to himself—nay he even permitted himself to say this to his wife, which was going perhaps too far. Heathcote, to be sure, had a younger brother; but then he was well known to be a delicate, consumptive boy.

To the ladies of the family he was more interesting, for various reasons. Rose and her mother regarded him with perfectly simple and uncomplicated views. If he should happen to prove agreeable, if things fitted in and came right, why then—the arrangement was one which might have its advantages. The original estate of Mount which was comprehended in the entail was not a large one, but still it was not unworthy consideration, especially when he had a little and she had a little besides. Anne, it need not be said, took no such serious contingency into her thoughts. But she too looked for Heathcote’s arrival with curiosity, almost with anxiety. He was one who had been as she now was, and who had fallen—fallen from that high estate. He had been loved—as Anne felt herself to be loved; but he had been betrayed. She thought with awe of the anguish, the horror of unwilling conviction, the dying out of all beauty and glory from the world, which it must have been his to experience. And he had lived long years since then, on this changed earth, under these changed skies. She began to long to see him with a fervour of curiosity which was mingled with pity and sympathy, and yet a certain touch of delicate scorn. How could he have lived after, lived so long, sunk (no doubt) into a dreamy routine of living, as if mere existence was worth retaining without hope or love? She was more curious about him than she had ever been about any visitor before, with perhaps a far-off consciousness that all this might happen to herself, mingling with the vehement conviction that it never could happen, that she was as far above it and secure from it as heaven is from the tempests and troubles of earth.

The much-expected visitor arrived in the twilight of an October evening just before dinner, and his first introduction to the family was in the indistinct light of the fire—one of the first fires of the season, which lighted up the drawing-room with a fitful ruddy blaze shining upon the white dresses of the girls, but scarcely revealing the elder people in their darker garments. A man in evening dress very often looks his best: but he does not look romantic—he does not look like a hero—the details of his appearance are too much like those of everybody else. Anne, looking at him breathlessly, trying to get a satisfactory impression of him when the light leaped up for a moment, found him too vigorous, too large, too life-like for her fastidious fancy; but Rose was made perfectly happy by the appearance of a man with whom it would not be at all necessary, she thought, to be upon stilts. The sound of his voice when he spoke dispersed ever so many visions. It was not too serious, as the younger sister had feared. It had not the lofty composure which the elder had hoped. He gave his arm to Mrs. Mountford with the air of a man not the least detached from his fellow-creatures. ‘There will be a frost to-night,’ he said; ‘it is very cold outside; but it is worth while being out in the cold to come into a cosy room like this.’ Charley Ashley would have said the very same had it been he who had walked up to dinner from the rectory. Heathcote had not been in the house for years, not perhaps ever since all that had happened, yet he spoke about the cosy room like any chance visitor. It would not be too much to say that there was a certain disgust in the revulsion with which Anne turned from him, though no doubt it was premature to pass judgment on him in the first five minutes like this.

In the light of the dining-room all mystery departed, and he was seen as he was. A tall man, strong, and well developed, with dark and very curly hair tinged all about his temples with grey; his lips smiling, his eyes somewhat serious, though kindling now and then with a habit of turning quickly round upon the person he was addressing. Four pairs of eyes were turned upon him with great curiosity as he took his seat at Mrs. Mountford’s side; two of them were satisfied, two not so. This, Mr. Mountford felt, was not the rusty and irregular man about town, for whom he had felt a contempt; still he was turning grey, which shows a feeble constitution. At sixty the master of Mount had not a grey hair in his head. As for Anne, this grey hair was the only satisfactory thing about him. She was not foolish enough to conclude that it must have turned so in a single night. But she felt that this at least was what might be expected. She was at the opposite side of the table, and could not but give a great deal of her attention to him. His hair curled in sheer wantonness of life and vigour, though it was grey; his voice was round, and strong, and melodious. As he sat opposite to her he smiled and talked, and looked like a person who enjoyed his life. Anne for her own part scarcely took any part in the conversation at all. For the first time she threw back her thoughts upon the Italian princess whom she had so scorned and condemned. Perhaps, after all, it was not she who had suffered the least. Anne conjured up a picture of that forlorn lady sitting somewhere in a dim solitary room in the heart of a great silent palace, thinking over that episode of her youth. Perhaps it was not she, after all, that was so much in the wrong.

‘I started from Sandhurst only this morning,’ he was saying, ‘after committing all kinds of follies with the boys. Imagine a respectable person of my years playing football! I thought they would have knocked all the breath out of me: yet you see I have survived. The young fellows had a match with men far too strong for them—and I used to have some little reputation that way in old days——’

‘Oh, yes, you were a great athlete; you played for Oxford in University matches, and got ever so many goals.’

‘This is startling,’ Heathcote said; ‘I did not know my reputation had travelled before me; it is a pity it is not something better worth remembering. But what do you know about goals, Miss Mountford, if I may make so bold?’

‘Rose,’ said that little person, who was wreathed in smiles; ‘that is Miss Mountford opposite. I am only the youngest. Oh, I heard from Charley Ashley all about it. We know about goals perfectly well, for we used to play ourselves long ago in the holidays with Charley and Willie—till mamma put a stop to it,’ Rose added, with a sigh.

‘I should think I put a stop to it! You played once, I believe,’ said Mrs. Mountford, with a slight frown, feeling that this was a quite unnecessary confidence.

‘Oh, much oftener; don’t you recollect, Anne, you played football too, and you were capital, the boys said?’

Now Anne was, in fact, much troubled by this revelation. She, in her present superlative condition, walking about in a halo of higher things, to be presented to a stranger who was not a stranger, and, no doubt, would soon hear all about her, as a football player, a girl who was athletic, a tom-boy, neither less nor more! She was about to reply with annoyance, when the ludicrous aspect of it suddenly struck her, and she burst into a laugh in spite of herself. ‘There is such a thing as an inconvenient memory,’ she said. ‘I am not proud of playing football now.’

‘I am not at all ashamed of it,’ said Rose. ‘I never should have known what a goal was if I hadn’t played. Do you play tennis, too, Mr. Heathcote? It is not too cold if you are fond of it. Charley said you were good at anything—good all round, he said.’

‘That is a very flattering reputation, and you must let me thank Mr. Charley, whoever he is, for sounding my trumpet. But all that was a hundred years ago,’ Heathcote said; and this made up a little lost ground for him with Anne, for she thought she heard something like a sigh.

‘You will like to try the covers,’ said Mr. Mountford. ‘I go out very little myself now-a-days, and I daresay you begin to feel the damp, too. I don’t preserve so much as I should like to do; these girls are always interfering with their false notions; but, all the same, I can promise you a few days’ sport.’

‘Is it the partridges or the poachers that the young ladies patronise?’ Heathcote said.

‘My dear,’ said Mrs. Mountford, ‘what is the use of calling attention to Anne’s crotchets? She has her own way of thinking, Mr. Heathcote. I tell her she must never marry a sportsman. But, indeed, she has a great deal to say for herself. It does not seem half so silly when you hear what she has got to say.’

Anne presented a somewhat indignant countenance to the laughing glance of the new cousin. She would not be drawn into saying anything in her own defence.

‘You will find a little sport, all the same,’ said Mr. Mountford; ‘but I go out very seldom myself; and I should think you must be beginning to feel the damp, too.’

‘Not much,’ said the younger man, with a laugh. He was not only athletic and muscular, but conscious of his strength, and somewhat proud of it. The vigour in him seemed an affront to all Anne’s pre-conceived ideas, as it was to her father’s comfortable conviction of the heir’s elderliness; his very looks seemed to cast defiance at these two discomfited critics. That poor lady in the Italian palace! it could not have been she that was so much in the wrong, after all.

‘I like him very much, mamma,’ cried Rose, when they got into the drawing-room; ‘I like him immensely: he is one of the very nicest men I ever saw. Do let us make use of him now he is here. Don’t you know that dance you always promised us?—let us have the dance while Heathcote is here. Old! who said he was old? he is delightful; and so nice-looking, and such pretty curly hair.’

‘Hush, my pet, do not be too rapturous; he is very nice, I don’t deny; but still, let us see how he bears a longer inspection; one hour at dinner is not enough to form an opinion. How do you like your cousin Heathcote, Anne?’

‘He is not at all what I expected,’ Anne said.

‘She expected a Don Quixote; she expected a Lord Byron, with his collar turned down; somebody that talked nothing but poetry. I am so glad,’ said Rose, ‘he is not like that. I shall not mind Mount going to Heathcote now. He is just my kind of man, not Anne’s at all.’

‘No, he is not Anne’s kind,’ said the mother.

Anne did not say anything. She agreed in their verdict; evidently Heathcote was one of those disappointments of which before she met Cosmo the world had been full. Many people had excited generally her curiosity, if not in the same yet in a similar way, and these had disappointed her altogether. She did not blame Heathcote. If he was unable to perceive his own position in the world, and the attitude that was befitting to him, possibly it was not his fault. Very likely it was not his fault; most probably he did not know any better. You cannot expect a man to act contrary to his nature, Anne said to herself; and she gave up Heathcote with a little gentle disdain. This disdain is the very soul of toleration. It is so much more easy to put up with the differences, the discrepancies, of other people’s belief or practice, when you find them inferior, not to be judged by your standards. This was what Anne did. She was not angry with him for not being the Heathcote she had looked for. She was tolerant: he knew no better; if you look for gold in a pebble, it is not the pebble’s fault if you do not find it. This was the mistake she had made. She went to the other end of the room where candles were burning on a table and chairs set out around. It was out of reach of all the chatter about Heathcote in which she did not agree. She took a book, and set it up before her to make a screen before her gaze, and, thus defended, went off at once into her private sanctuary and thought of Cosmo. Never was there a transformation scene more easily managed. The walls of the Mount drawing-room divided, they gave place to a group of the beeches, with two figures seated underneath, or to a bit of the commonplace road, but no longer commonplace—a road that led to the Manor. What right had a girl to grumble at her companions, or any of their ways, when she could escape in the twinkling of an eye into some such beautiful place, into some such heavenly company, which was all her own? But yet there would come back occasionally, as through a glass, an image of the Italian lady upon whom she had been so hard a little while before. Poor Italian lady! evidently, after all, Heathcote’s life had not been blighted. Had she, perhaps, instead of injuring him only blighted her own?

The softly-lighted room, the interchange of soft voices at one end, the figure at the other intent upon a book, lighting up eyes full of dreams, seemed a sort of enchanted vision of home to Heathcote Mountford when, after an interval, he came in alone, hesitating a little as he crossed the threshold. He was not used to home. A long time ago his own house had been closed up at the death of his mother—not so much closed up but that now and then he went to it with a friend or two, establishing their bachelorhood in the old faded library and drawing-room, which could be smoked in, and had few associations. But the woman’s part of the place was all shut up, and he was not used to any woman’s part in his life. This, however, was all feminine; he went in as to an enchanted castle. Even Mrs. Mountford, who was commonplace enough, and little Rose, who was a pretty little girl and no more, seemed wonderful creatures to him who had dropped out of acquaintance with such creatures; and the elder daughter was something more. He felt a little shy, middle-aged as he was, as he went in. And this place had many associations; one time or other it would be his own; one time or other it might come to pass that he, like his old kinsman, would pass by the drawing-room, and prefer the ease of the library, his own chair and his papers. At this idea he laughed within himself, and went up to Mrs. Mountford on her sofa, who stopped talking when she saw who it was.

‘Mr. Mountford has gone to his own room. I was to tell you he has something to do.’

‘Oh, papa has always an excuse!’ cried Rose; ‘he never comes here in the evening. I am sure this room is far nicer, and we are far nicer, than sitting there all by himself among those musty books. And he never reads them even! he puts on his dressing-gown and sits at his ease——’

‘Hush, you silly child! When a gentleman comes to be papa’s age he can’t be expected to care for the company of girls, even when they are his own. I will take my work and sit with him by-and-by. You must not give your cousin reason to think that you are undutiful to papa.’

‘Oh, never mind!’ said Rose; ‘Mr. Heathcote, come, and be on my side against mamma. It is so seldom we have gentlemen staying here—indeed, there are very few gentlemen in the county—there are daughters, nothing but daughters, in most of the houses. And mamma has promised us a dance whenever we could get enough men. I want her to give it while you are here.’

‘While I am here; but you don’t suppose I am a dancing man?’

‘You can dance, I am sure,’ said Rose. ‘I can see it in your face; and then you would make acquaintance with all the neighbours. It would be dreadful when you come to live here after our time if you do not know a soul. You must make acquaintance with everybody; and it would be far more fun to have a ball than a quantity of dreary dinner-parties. Do come here and be on my side against mamma!’

‘How can I be against my kind kinswoman,’ he said laughing, ‘who has taken me in and received me so graciously, though I belong to the other branch? That would be ingratitude of the basest sort.’

‘Then you must be against me,’ said Rose.

‘That would be impossible!’ he said, with another laugh; and drew his chair close to the table and threw himself into the discussion. Rose’s bright little countenance lighted up, her blue eyes shone, her cheeks glowed. She got a piece of paper and a pencil, and began to reckon up who could be invited. ‘The men first,’ she said, with the deepest gravity, furtively applying her pencil to her lips to make it mark the blacker as in old school-room days; ‘the men must go down first, for we are always sure of plenty of girls—but you cannot have a dance without men. First of all, I will put down you. You are one to start with—Mr. Heathcote Mountford; how funny it is to have a gentleman of the same name, who is not papa!’

‘Ah! that is because you never had a brother!’ said Mrs. Mountford, with a sigh; ‘it never seemed at all strange to us at home. I beg your pardon, I am sure, Mr. Heathcote; of course it would have interfered with you; but for girls not to have a brother is sad for them, poor things! It always makes a great deal of difference in a girl’s life.’

‘What am I to say?’ asked Heathcote. ‘I am very sorry, but—how can I be sorry when I have just become conscious of my privileges; it is an extremely pleasant thing to step into this vacant post.’

‘A second cousin is not like a brother,’ said Rose; ‘but, anyhow, at a dance you would be the man of the house. And you do dance? if you don’t you must learn before the ball. We will teach you, Anne and I.’

‘I can dance a little, but I have no doubt lessons would do me good. Now go on; I want to see my comrades and coadjutors.’

Rose paused with her pencil in her hand. ‘Mr. Heathcote Mountford, that is one; that is a great thing to begin with. And then there is—then there is—who shall I put down next? who is there else, mamma? Of course Charley Ashley; but he is a clergyman, he scarcely counts. That is why a garden-party is better than a dance in the country, because the clergymen all count for that. I think there is somebody staying with the Woodheads, and there is sure to be half-a-dozen at Meadowlands; shall I put down six for Meadowlands? They must invite some one if they have not so many; all our friends must invite some one—we must insist upon it,’ Rose said.

‘My dear, that is always the difficulty; you know that is why we have had to give it up so often. In the vacation there is Willie Ashley; he is always somebody.’

‘He must come,’ cried Rose, energetically, ‘for three days—that will be enough—for three days; Charley must write and tell him. And then there is—who is there more, mamma? Mr. Heathcote Mountford, that is an excellent beginning, and he is an excellent dancer, and will go on all the evening through, and dance with everybody. Still, we cannot give a ball with only one man.’

‘I will send for my brother and some more of those young fellows from Sandhurst, Mrs. Mountford, if you can put them up.’

‘If we can put them up!’ Rose all but threw herself into the arms of this new cousin, her eyes all but filled with tears of gratitude. She gave a little shriek of eagerness—‘Of course we can put them up; oh! as many as ever you please, as many as you can get:—shall I put down twenty for Sandhurst? Now we have a real ball in a moment,’ said Rose, with enthusiasm. It had been the object of her desires all her life.

‘Does Miss Mountford take no interest in the dance?’ Heathcote asked.

‘Anne? Oh, she will take it up when it comes near the time. She will do a great deal; she will arrange everything; but she does not take any pleasure in planning; and then,’ said Rose, dropping her voice to a whisper—‘Hush! don’t look to make her think we are talking of her; she does not like to be talked of—Mr. Heathcote! Anne is—engaged.’

‘My dear child!’ cried her mother. ‘Mr. Heathcote, this is all nonsense; you must not pay the least attention to what this silly child says. Engaged!—what folly, Rose! you know your sister is nothing of the kind. It is nothing but imagination; it is only your nonsense, it is——’

‘You wouldn’t dare, mamma, to say that to Anne,’ said Rose, with a very solemn face.

‘Dare! I hope I should dare to say anything to Anne. Mr. Heathcote will think we are a strange family when the mother wouldn’t dare to say anything to the daughter, and her own child taunts her with it. I don’t know what Mr. Heathcote would think of us,’ said Mrs. Mountford, vehemently, ‘if he believed what you said.’

‘I do not think anything but what you tell me,’ said Heathcote, endeavouring to smooth the troubled waters. ‘I know there are family difficulties everywhere. Pray don’t think of making explanations. I am sure whatever you do will be kind, and whatever Miss Mountford does will spring from a generous heart. One needs only to look at her to see that.’

Neither of the ladies thought he had paid any attention to Anne, and they were surprised—for it had not occurred to them that Anne, preoccupied as she was, could have any interest for the new comer. They were startled by the quite unbounded confidence in Anne which he thus took it upon him to profess. They exchanged looks of surprise. ‘Yes, Anne has a generous heart—no one can deny that,’ Mrs. Mountford said. It was in the tone of a half-unwilling admission, but it was all the more effective on that account. Anne had listened to their voices, half-pleased thus to escape interruption, half-disgusted to have more and more proofs of the frivolity of the new comer: she had heard a sentence now and then, an exclamation from Rose, and had been much amused by them. She was more startled by the cessation of the sounds, by the sudden fall, the whispering, the undertones, than by the conversation. What could they be talking of now, and why should they whisper as if there were secrets in hand? Next minute, however, when she was almost roused to the point of getting up to see what it was, Mrs. Mountford’s voice became audible again.

‘Do you sing now, Mr. Heathcote? I remember long ago you used to have a charming voice!’

‘I don’t know that it was ever very charming; but such as it is I have the remains of it,’ he said.

‘Then come and sing something,’ said Mrs. Mountford. What was it they had been saying which broke off so suddenly, and occasioned this jump to a different subject? But Anne composed herself to her dreams again, when she saw the group moving towards the piano. He sang, too, then! sang and danced and played football, after what had happened to him? Decidedly, the Italian princess must have had much to be said on her side.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE SPECTATOR’S VIEW.

Such was the excellent opinion his cousin’s wife expressed of him. It is needless to say that her neighbours imputed motives to poor Mrs. Mountford, and jumped at the cause of her partiality. ‘She means him to marry Rose,’ everybody said; and some applauded her prudence; and some denounced her selfishness in sacrificing Rose to a man old enough to be her father; but, on the whole, the county approved both the man himself and the opportunity of making his acquaintance. He was asked to dinner at Meadowlands, which was all that could be desired for any visitor in the neighbourhood. The Mountfords felt that they had done their utmost for any guest of theirs when they had procured them this gratification. And Lord Meadowlands quite ‘took to’ Heathcote. This was the best thing that could happen to anyone new to the county, the sort of thing on which the other members of society congratulated each other when the neophyte was a favourite, taking each other into corners and saying: ‘He has been a great deal at the Castle,’ or ‘He has been taken up by Lord Meadowlands.’ Thus the reception given to the heir of entail was in every way satisfactory, and even Mr. Mountford himself got to like him. The only one who kept aloof was Anne, who was at this moment very much preoccupied with her own thoughts; but it was not from any dislike to the new member of the household. He had not fulfilled her expectations. But that most probably was not his fault. And, granting the utter want of delicate perception in him, and understanding of the rôle which ought to have been his in the circumstances, Anne, after a few days, came to think tolerably well of her new kinsman. He was intelligent: he could talk of things which the others rejected as nonsense or condemned as highflown. On the question of the cottages, for instance, he had shown great good sense; and on the whole, though with indifference, Anne conceded a general approval to him. But they did not draw together, or so at least the other members of the family thought. Rose monopolised him when he was in the drawing-room. She challenged him at every turn, as a very young and innocent girl may do, out of mere high spirits, without conscious coquetry at least: she contradicted him and defied him, and adopted his opinions and scoffed at them by turns, keeping him occupied, with an instinctive art which was quite artless, and meant ‘fun’ more than anything serious. At all this pretty play Anne looked on without seeing it, having her head full of other things. And the mother looked on, half-afraid, half-disapproving (as being herself of a stricter school and older fashion), yet not sufficiently afraid or displeased to interfere; while Heathcote himself was amused, and did not object to the kittenish sport of the pretty little girl, whose father (he said to himself) he might have been, so far as age went. But he kept an eye, notwithstanding, on ‘the other girl,’ whom he did not understand. That she was ‘engaged,’ and yet not permitted to be spoken of as ‘engaged’—that there was some mystery about her—was evident. A suspicion of a hidden story excites every observer. Heathcote wanted to find it out, as all of us would have done. As for himself, he was not incapable of higher sentiments, though Anne had easily set him down as being so: but his experiences had not been confined to one romantic episode, as she, in her youthful ignorance, had supposed. The story was true enough, but with a difference. The Italian princess was not a noble lady compelled to wed in her own rank and relinquish her young Englishman, as Mrs. Mountford had recounted it, but a poor girl of much homelier gentility, whose lot had been fixed long before Heathcote traversed her simple path, and who fulfilled that lot with a few tears but not very much reluctance, much more in the spirit of Keziah than of Anne. Heathcote himself looked back upon the little incident with a smile. He would have gone to the ends of the earth to serve her had she wanted his help, but he did not regret that Antonia had not been his wife all these years. Perhaps he would have required a moment’s reflection to think what anyone could mean who referred to this story. But even the fact that such an episode was of no special importance in his life would have been against him with Anne in the present state of her thoughts. She would not have allowed it as possible or right that a man should have gone beyond the simplicity of such an incident. In her experience love was as yet the first great fact, the one enlightener, awakener of existence. It had changed her own life from the foundation, nay, had given her an individual, separate life, as she fondly thought, such as, without this enchantment, no one could have. But Heathcote had lived a great deal longer, had seen a great deal more. He had been ‘knocked about,’ as people say. He had seen the futility of a great many things upon which simple people set their hopes; he had come to be not very solicitous about much which seems deeply important to youth. Thirty-five had worked upon him its usual influence. But of all this Anne knew nothing, and she put him aside as a problem not worth solution, as a being whose deficiencies were deficiencies of nature. She was more interesting to him. She was the only one of the house who was not evident on the surface. And his interest was stimulated by natural curiosity. He wanted to know what the story was which the child-sister referred to so frankly, which the mother wanted to ignore. There was even a something in the intercourse between Anne and her father which caught his attention. They were on perfectly good terms—but what was it? He was a man who took things as they came, who did not feel a very profound interest in anything—save one thing. But this little mystery reflected in Anne’s serious eyes, and pervading the house with a sense of something not apparent, roused the dormant sentiment more than he could have thought possible.

The one thing that interested Heathcote Mountford to the bottom of his heart was his young brother, for whom he had a tender, semi-parental passion, preferring his concerns above everything else in the world. It was this, indeed, which had brought him to Mount with a proposal which he could not but feel that Mr. Mountford would grasp at. He had come to offer to his predecessor in the entail that they should join together and break it—a singular step for an heir in his position to take. But as yet he had said nothing about this chief object of his visit. When he formed the project it had not cost him much. What did he want with an estate and a big house to keep up, he had said to himself in the snugness of his bachelor’s chambers, so much more comfortable than Mount, or any other such big barrack of a place could ever be made? He had already a shabby old house to which he went now and then to shoot, and which—because Edward (not to speak of himself) had been born in it, and their mother had died in it, as well as many generations of Edwards and Heathcotes in the past—could not be done away with, however melancholy and dismal it might get to be. But Mount had no associations for him. Why should not St. John’s girls have it, as was just and natural? The Mountfords of Mount were not anything so very great that heaven and earth should be moved to keep them up. Besides, he would not be of much use in keeping them up; he never meant to marry (not because of Antonia, but probably because of ‘knocking about’ and forgetting that any one thing in the world was more important than any other), and Edward was delicate, and there was no telling what the boy might do;—far better to have a good sum of money, to set that wayward fellow above the reach of trouble, and leave it to St. John’s girls to provide for the race. No doubt they would do that fast enough. They would marry, and their children could take the name. Thus he had his plans all cut and dry before he reached Mount. But when he got there, either the reserve of Mr. Mountford’s manner, or some certain charm in the place which he had not anticipated, deferred the execution of it. He thought it over and arranged all the details during each day’s shooting, notwithstanding that the gamekeepers insisted all the time on discoursing with him upon the estate, and pointing out what should be done under a new reign which the present master did not care to have done; but in the evening he was too tired (he said to himself) to open so important a subject; and thus day after day went on. Perhaps the discourses even of the gamekeepers, and their eagerness to point out to him the evils that were to be amended at presumably the not very distant period when a new monarch should reign, and the welcome he received from the people he met, and the success he had at Meadowlands, and the interest which he excited in the county, had something to do with the disinclination to open the subject which seemed to have crept upon him; or probably it was only laziness. This was the reason which he assigned to himself—indolence of mind, which was one of his besetting sins he knew. But, anyhow, whatever was the cause, he had as yet said nothing on the subject. He had accepted all the allusions that were made to his future connection with the county, and the overtures of friendship; and he had owned himself flattered by the attentions of Lord Meadowlands: everything had gone indeed precisely as things might have gone had he fully accepted his position as heir of the Mountfords. Nobody for a moment doubted that position: and still he did nothing to undeceive them, nothing to show his real disinclination to assume the burden of the ownership of Mount. Was he really so disinclined to accept it? After this week of the new life his head seemed confused on the subject, and he was not quite so sure.

But all the same he felt instinctively that Anne would make a far better squire than he should. He had gone through the village with the girls, and he had seen how everything centred in Anne. Though there was (he thought) a certain severity in her, the village people evidently did not feel it. They were more at home with her than even with her little sister. The rector came up to her in the street, and put his arm within hers, and led her away to see something which had to be done, with a mixture of authority and appeal which touched the looker-on. Mr. Ashley was old and feeble, and there was something pretty in the way in which he supported himself at once physically and morally on the young, slim, elastic strength of the girl, who was the natural born princess of the place. At the schools she was supreme. Wherever she went, it was evidently recognised that she was the representative at once of law and of power. Heathcote, who had not been used to it, looked upon her with surprise and a wondering admiration. ‘You are in great demand,’ he said. ‘You have a great deal to do. You seem to have the government of the place in your hands.’

‘Papa is not so active as he used to be,’ Anne said. ‘Besides, there are so many little things which come more naturally to me.’

‘You are princess regent,’ he said: ‘I see; you act for the king, but you are more than the king. A man could never do that.’

‘Men can do a great deal more than women in everything,’ said Anne, with decision.

‘Oh! can they? I should not have said so; but no doubt you know best.’

‘If they cannot, what is the meaning of everything that is said in the world, Mr. Heathcote? you would have to change the entire language. We are never supposed to be good for anything. What is life to us is supposed to be an amusement to you.’

‘This is a new light,’ said Heathcote, somewhat startled. He had no idea that it was poor Antonia, the mother of half a dozen children, who was in Anne’s mind all the time.

‘Anne, don’t! Mamma says you should never talk like that to gentlemen; they will think you go in for women’s rights and all sorts of horrible things. She doesn’t, cousin Heathcote. She only wants to make you stare.’

‘I think I go in for everybody’s rights; I don’t mind whether they are women or men,’ said Anne. ‘Mrs. Fisher, what is the matter? The children don’t come to school, and Johnny has left the choir. There must be some reason for all that.’

‘Miss Anne,’ said the woman, with a smirk and a curtsey, ‘Johnny’s been in the rectory kitchen learning to be a boy. Mr. Douglas, miss, that was stopping at the rectory, took a fancy to him, and old Simes is a-training of him. Mr. Douglas—that’s the gentleman—is going to have him at his house in town, Miss Anne. You knows him, Johnny says.’

At this Rose gave vent to a suppressed giggle, and the woman smirked more broadly than ever. But these signs might not have caught the attention of Heathcote but for the violent flush which he saw overspread Anne’s face. His attention was roused on the moment.

‘Mr. Douglas has been gone for some time,’ he heard Anne say. A note had got into her voice that had not been there before—a softness, a roundness, a melting of the tones. Mr. Douglas!—who was he? Heathcote said who was the fellow? within himself with an instinctive opposition. ‘The fellow’ had nothing whatever to do with him, yet he disliked him at once.

‘Yes, Miss Anne; but Johnny has been in the rectory kitchen a-training ever since the gentleman went away.’

Anne made the woman a little friendly sign with her hand and went on. She did not pursue her inquiries as officer of the school any more: she accepted the excuse, though it was no excuse; which showed, he said to himself with a smile, how efficient female officers of school boards would be. Perhaps she was half humbled by this evidence of being too easily satisfied. She volunteered a profession of her faith.

‘I do not approve of too stringent measures: you ought not to set up one arbitrary rule; you ought to take the circumstances into consideration.’ All this was said with a little heat. ‘I suppose why school boards have been so unpopular where they exist is very much because of that.’

Again a little giggle escaped from the bosom of Rose; but it was quickly suppressed. She gave Heathcote a significant look, as Anne was stopped by some one else who wanted to speak to her. ‘That was the gentleman,’ Rose whispered, with mischievous delight.

Well, if it was the gentleman! Heathcote thought, he was a lucky fellow; but the idea of giving up Mount was from that moment less pleasant, he could scarcely tell why. He did not relish the notion of some fellow called Douglas, probably some Scotsman who would not part with his very ordinary name for a king’s ransom, coming into possession of the old place. Who was Douglas? On the whole, Heathcote for the first time acknowledged to himself that there might be two sides to the question, and that there was something wrong and faithless in separating the old name of Mountford and the male heir from Mount.

Next day, however, by accident further light was thrown to him on this question. The principal post came in at noon, and it was the habit of the house that the letters which came by it should be ranged upon one of the tables in the hall, in little heaps, where their respective owners found them. Coming in to get his share of the budget, Heathcote found that Mr. Mountford was there before him. He had his letters in his left hand, but with his right had taken up another which lay on Anne’s heap. He was balancing it in his fingers half-contemptuous, half-angry, when Heathcote, with the involuntary indiscretion which so often belongs to the innocent, knowing no reason why anything should be done in secret, paused behind him, and saw at a glance what he was about. It was not anything tragical: Mr. Mountford had no intention of tampering with Anne’s letter: but he held it up, and turned it over, and looked at it all round with a look of disgust on his countenance. By this time Heathcote had been awakened to the sense that he was prying into a domestic mystery, he who had no right to do so, and he hastened to gather his own letters from the table. Mrs. Mountford by this time had come in, on the same errand. Her husband held the letter up to her with an indignant ‘humph!’ ‘Do you see? She is keeping it up in spite of all I have said.’

‘I don’t want to see it,’ said the stepmother, nervously; ‘put it down. I have nothing to do with Anne’s letters, papa!’

And then a sort of sensation spread through the room, he could not tell what, and Heathcote became aware that Anne herself had come in. She walked straight to the table where her father stood, still with her letter in his hand. She recognised it in his hand with a sudden flush of consciousness, and stood facing him, saying nothing, pale now, but with courage, not fear.

‘This is for you apparently, Anne; you are keeping up the correspondence whatever I may say.’

‘Yes, papa, I am keeping it up.’ She put out her hand and took the letter. She made no explanation or excuse; but went away with it, slowly, with a sort of formal dignity. It was a strange little scene. The observer seemed to see the story rising like a picture before him—as Anne had thought she saw his story—but more distinctly as being more near. He was more interested than he could say. He had no right to inquire into what was so distinctly a family secret. If she only would have confided in him, told him how it was!—but that he had no right to expect. It made a visible commotion in the house for the rest of the day. Little signs of agitation were visible, signs which without this elucidation would only have puzzled, would have conveyed no enlightenment to his mind. Anne did not appear at lunch. She had gone, it was said, to the village, and no doubt had stopped to luncheon with the Woodheads. And Mr. Mountford was gloomy and absent, yet at the same time more alert than usual. ‘I am going to ride over to Hunston this afternoon,’ he announced. ‘Perhaps you would like to go with me, Heathcote, and see the place?’

‘What are you going to do at Hunston, papa? Let me come with you too: let us all go together,’ said Rose.

‘I am going to see Mr. Loseby,’ her father said; and this, though it had no effect upon Rose, made her mother start slightly, and cast an anxious look towards the head of the table.

‘Do you think, St. John, it is a good day to go to Hunston? It is very damp, and I am sure you will make your cold worse.’

Mrs. Mountford was not the soul of generosity: but she was far from being unjust or cruel. She was afraid of what her husband might be going to do, even should it be for the advantage of Rose.

‘I think I can manage to take care of my cold,’ he said.

‘But that is just what gentlemen never do. Don’t go to-day, St. John. Wait till it is drier and brighter;’ she even got up from her chair and went round to him and put her hand on his shoulder. ‘Wait till you have had time to think.’

‘I have taken too much time to think,’ he said crossly, turning away his head and rising from the table. ‘Heathcote, if you would like to come with me, I shall be ready in half-an-hour.’

‘What is it, mamma?’ said Rose, half frightened too, as her father went out of the room. Mrs. Mountford—the spectator always thought the better of her for it—fell a-crying, without being able to restrain herself, half in real distress, half in nervous excitement. ‘Oh, Mr. Heathcote, if you can do anything to smooth him down, do so; I am afraid he is going to—to tamper with his will!’ she cried.

CHAPTER XV.

TAMPERING WITH A LAWYER.

‘That’s Newton-Magna. The Newtons once contested the county with us. My grandfather married a Newton—they are, therefore, connections. This is where old Lady Prayrey Poule lives. She has just made a ridiculous marriage, of which everybody is talking. I don’t know who the man is. There is Meadowlands to the right, and that’s young Lassell’s place, whom I suppose you have heard of.’

This was the style of his conversation. Sometimes he varied it by giving his kinsman an account of the value of the livings and the goodness of the land.

‘It is worth so much an acre on this side of the river, and not half on the other side. The land up my way is generally good, and the livings are excellent. In my parish the living has always been held by a younger son, but naturally there has been no younger son. Ah! you think that Edward;—well, if I had known more of Edward, I might perhaps—but he is quite young; there is plenty of time.’

Between the intervals, however, when he was not engaged with these local details, Mr. Mountford had not much to say. He was not brilliant in himself, and he was preoccupied. He had all the air of a man who was going, as his wife said, to tamper with his will. When his companion spoke to him he gave short answers: his thoughts were somewhere else. When they approached the town he became still more brief in his indications.

‘The church is considered fine, I believe, and the High Street is a nice street. I am going to Loseby’s, who is my lawyer. He has had all the Mount affairs in his hands since ever I can remember, and much longer—he and his father before him. He’ll like to make your acquaintance; but in the meantime I have some business with him. Perhaps you would like to look about the town a little.’

Heathcote said he would like to look about the town, and Mr. Mountford, evidently gathering himself up with an effort, buttoned up a button which had come undone of his coat, and with a very determined air strode into the lawyer’s office. It was part of a tall red brick house, which formed an important feature in the scene, a house with many rows of windows, long and narrow, which twinkled in the setting sun. In Heathcote’s mind there was a great deal of mingled curiosity and sympathy. He would have liked to know what was going to happen, to be behind Mr. Loseby’s curtains, or in some cupboard full of parchments. There could be no doubt that something affecting Anne’s future was in the wind. He laughed at himself, after a moment, to think how much importance, how much gravity he was attaching to it. After all, he said to himself, as Cosmo had done before, tyrannical fathers are a thing of the past—nobody cuts off a child now-a-days with a shilling. No doubt all Mr. Mountford meant was to tie up her money so that no worthless fellow of a husband could get at it. But, though he felt that this was the only reasonable interpretation of Mr. Mountford’s mission, yet the various little scenes he had been a witness to made an impression upon his mind in spite of himself. Anne standing grave and simple, facing her father, holding out her hand for her letter, saying, ‘Yes, I keep it up’—was it undutiful of the girl? and the father’s stern displeasure and the mother’s (or stepmother was it? all the more credit to her) excitement and distress. To be sure a family quarrel always threw a house into agitation, even where no great harm was to be looked for. No doubt it was undutiful of the girl. After all, if a parent is not to have influence on that point, where is the use of him? And no doubt she had chosen a man unworthy of her, or such a fuss never would have been made. Heathcote was not a parent, but still he had in some respects the responsibilities of a parent. Edward was delicate—he was not strong enough to fight his way against the world; but he was not amiable, the quality which ought to belong to all delicate and weakly persons, and which makes up for so many deficiencies. He had strong passions in his weak body. He had already got into various scrapes, out of which his brother had been called upon to draw him. Heathcote had a letter in his pocket now which had given him a great deal of thought. It had drawn him back to his former conviction that Edward’s affairs were the most important in the world. It was not in his power by himself to do all that Edward wanted, to secure the boy’s comfort, so far as that was possible. He must speak to Mr. Mountford on the ride home. It was not a thing to be neglected any longer. This was the chief thing in his mind as he walked about Hunston, looking into the old church and surveying all the shops. He ‘made acquaintance,’ as his kinsman had bidden him, with the quiet little county town, with a curious mingling of ideas in his mind. In the first place, he could not but think how many generations of Mountfords had trodden this pavement—ladies in farthingales and men in periwigs, bucks of the Regency, sober politicians of the period of Reform; and by-and-by it would be his own turn—he too in his day would ride in on a steady-going old cob, like St. John Mountford, or drive in the family coach to see his lawyer and his banker and do his business. But no—he contradicted himself with a little confusion—no, this was just what he was not to do. For the moment he had forgotten his own purpose, the object that brought him to the old home of the race—which was to sever himself from it. No, after all, he said to himself with a smile, there was not very much to give up; the pleasure of riding into the county town and receiving the respectful salutations of all the shopkeepers: that was not much. The Albany was a better place to live in, Piccadilly was a little more entertaining than the High Street. Nevertheless, it was certain that Heathcote felt a pinch of regret when he remembered that the glories of Mount and the greetings of Hunston were not to be his. He laughed, but he did not like it. All the more was it essential that this step should be taken without delay.

Heathcote examined everything there was to see in the place, and walked three or four times from one end to another of the High Street, awakening the greatest curiosity in the bosoms of all the shopkeepers, and a flutter of futile hope and expectation behind the bonnets in the milliner’s windows, where Miss Trimmin’s niece took this novel apparition for the hero of her last romance. That a gentleman should see a face at a window, and walk up and down High Street for an hour for the chance of another glimpse of it, was not at all an out-of-the-way event for the readers of the ‘Family Herald’—much more likely than that he should be waiting for Mr. Mountford. When, however, the master of Mount appeared at last, he bore all the outward signs of a prolonged combat. His hair was rubbed up off his forehead, so that his hat rested upon the ends of it, not upon his head. His eyes were agitated and rolling. Mr. Loseby, a little stout old gentleman, with a large watchchain and seals, came out after him with similar signs of commotion. The family lawyer was red and breathless, while his companion was choked and pale. They came out together with that air of formal politeness which follows a quarrel, to the door.

‘Heathcote,’ Mr. Mountford called, holding up his hand; ‘this is Mr. Loseby, whose name must be known to you as the man of business of my family for several generations. We have always had the utmost confidence in them, as they have always done their best for us.’

‘After such an introduction,’ said Mr. Loseby, ‘I ought to make a bow and hope for the continuance of custom and favour, which my best efforts will be exerted to deserve.’

And then there was a forced laugh, in which some of the resentment of the two elder men fortunately blew off. They stood together in a circle at the door of the Queen Anne Mansion. Mr. Loseby only wore no hat. He was bald and round and shining all over, a man to whom genial good-humour was evidently more natural than the air of heat and irritation which was upon him now.

‘I hope we are to see something of Mr. Heathcote Mountford in the county after this. I hope you mean to make acquaintance with your neighbours, and feel yourself at home. The name of Mountford is a passport here.’ (‘Though I don’t know why it should be—obstinate asses! pig-headed fools!’ the puffing little lawyer said to himself.)

‘I am here on false pretences,’ Heathcote said. ‘I fear I have been taking in my cousin and his family and all their excellent friends. I may as well tell it at last. My real object in coming was rather to sever myself from the county than to draw the bond tighter——’

‘What do you mean?’ said Mr. Mountford, abruptly.

‘Forgive me for saying nothing about it before. This is a good opportunity now, when we have Mr. Loseby’s assistance. I came with the express intention of making a proposal to you, St. John, about the entail.’

Mr. Loseby looked first at the speaker and then at his client, forming his lips into a round, as if he would have said, ‘Whew-w!’ This was something altogether new.

Mr. Mountford took no notice of his look; he said, still more abruptly than before, ‘What about the entail?’

‘Pardon me if I say it,’ said Heathcote. ‘Mount is quite new to me; it does not attract me’ (what a fib that was, he felt in his heart). ‘I shall never marry. I have suffered the time for forming new connections to pass, and my brother has indifferent health and no liking for country life. On the other hand, it is natural that my cousin should prefer to be succeeded by his own family. What I have to say is that I am very willing, if you like it, to join with you in breaking the entail.’

‘In breaking the entail!’ Mr. Loseby’s mouth grew rounder and rounder: he seemed to be forming one whistle after another, which came to nothing. But he did not take time to express his own surprise or his own opinion, so much was he occupied in watching the effect of this announcement upon Mr. Mountford. The latter was dumbfoundered; he stood and stared at the speaker with blank dismay and consternation. But it did not apparently produce any livelier or happier impression upon his mind. He was not eager to snatch at the opportunity of putting his own child in his place.

‘You must be cracked,’ he said; ‘do you know how long the Mountfords have been at Mount?—the oldest house in the county, and, if not the richest or the largest, in some ways by far the most interesting. Heathcote, there must be something under this. If you are pressed for money, if there is anything you want to do, I dare say Loseby will manage it for you.’

‘I will do anything that is in reason,’ Mr. Loseby said, not without a little emphasis which brought a tinge of red on his client’s countenance. They could not yet give up their duel with each other, however important the other communication might be.

‘Heathcote Mountford will not ask you to do anything out of reason,’ cried the other; ‘and in case he should exceed that limit, here am I ready to be his security. No, we must not hear anything more about breaking the entail.’

‘I am afraid you must consent to hear something more,’ said Heathcote, half pleased, half angry; ‘it is not a sudden fancy. I have considered it thoroughly; there are numberless advantages, and, so far as I can see, nothing of substantial weight to be brought forward on the other side.’

‘Oh, come, this is too much!’ cried the lawyer, moved to professional interest; ‘nothing on the other side! But this is not a place to discuss so serious a subject. Step into my office, and let us have it out.’

‘I have had enough of your office for one day,’ said Mr. Mountford (at which the lawyer barely restrained a chuckle); ‘I have had quite enough of your office, I’ll go and see about the horses. If there is anything wrong, Heathcote, have it out, as he says, with Loseby. He’ll make it all right for you. He may not always be satisfactory to deal with for those who prefer to judge for themselves sometimes; but if it is anything you want, he’ll give you trustworthy advice.’

‘Thank you for your good word, squire,’ said the lawyer, laughing and putting his hand to his forehead with the duck of a country bumpkin. ‘Now take a seat,’ he added, as he led the stranger into a trim wainscoted room with cupboards hid behind half the panels, and the secrets of half the families of the county in them, ‘and let us talk this over. I cannot understand why Mountford does not jump at it (yes, I do; I can understand, now), but why you should wish to do it! Pardon me, if I say on your side it is mere madness. What good can it do you? If you want money, as your cousin says, I can get you as much money as you like—at least,’ he said, pausing to survey him with dubious looks, as if with a momentary apprehension that his new acquaintance might turn out a sporting man in difficulties or something of that disreputable kind, ‘almost as much as you like.’

‘I do want money,’ Heathcote said, ‘but I do not want it unless I give a fair equivalent. The entail is of no advantage to me. I live in London. I do not want to keep up the faded glories of a place in the country.’

‘Faded glories! We thought, on the contrary, everything was as fine as in the Queen’s palace, and all new,’ cried Mr. Loseby, with his favourite restrained whistle of comic surprise.

‘I have a place of my own,’ said Heathcote, ‘a poor one, I allow, but enough for my requirements. I am not a marrying man, and very likely, God knows, to be the last of my family; what do I want with an entailed estate?’