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.