‘What could happen, my dear?’ she said, pointedly adding a moral; ‘they gave everybody a great deal of trouble for a time, as young people who are crossed in anything always do; but people abroad make very short work with these matters. The lady was married, of course, to somebody in her own rank of life.’
‘And the gentleman?—it was the gentleman you were telling us about.’
‘The gentleman—poor Heathcote! well, he has got on well enough—I suppose as well as other people. He has never married; but then I don’t see how he could marry, for he has nothing to marry upon.’
‘Heathcote! do you mean Heathcote Mountford?’
It was Anne who spoke this time—the story had grown more and more interesting to her as it went on. Her voice trembled a little as she asked this hasty question; it quivered with sympathy, with wondering pain. The lady married somebody—in her own rank in life—the man never married at all, but probably could not because he had nothing to marry on. Was that the end of it all—a dull matter-of-fact little tragedy? She remembered hearing such words before often enough, but never had given them any attention until now.
‘Yes, I mean your cousin Heathcote Mountford. He is coming next week to see papa.’
Rose had been looking from one to another with her round eyes full of excitement. Now she drew a long breath and said in a tone of awe, ‘The heir of the entail.’
‘Yes, the heir of the entail,’ said Mrs. Mountford solemnly. She looked at her daughter, and the one pair of eyes seemed to take fire from the other. ‘He is as poor—as poor as a mouse. Of course he will have Mount when—anything happens to papa. But papa’s life is as good as his. He is thirty-five, and he has never had much stamina. I don’t mean to say that it is so generally, but sometimes a man is quite old at thirty-five.’
At this time very different reflections gleamed across the minds of the girls. ‘Papa was nearly forty when mamma married him,’ Rose said to herself with great quickness, while the thought that passed through Anne’s mind was ‘Thirty-five—five years older than Cosmo.’ Neither one thing nor the other, it may be said, had much to do with Heathcote Mountford; and yet there was meaning in it, so far as Rose at least was concerned.
She was thoughtful for the rest of the day, and asked her mother several very pertinent questions when they were alone, as ‘Where does Heathcote Mountford live? Has he any money at all? or does he do anything for his living? has he any brothers and sisters?’ She was determined to have a very clear understanding of all the circumstances of his life.