‘I know nothing about Rose’s husband,’ he cried testily. ‘I never thought of him. And so you can talk of all this quite at your ease?’ he added. ‘You don’t mind?’
This was a kind of offence to him, as well as a satisfaction. She had no right to think so little of it: and yet what a relief it was!
Anne shook her head and smiled. ‘It is better not to talk of it at all,’ she said.
This conversation had a great effect upon Mr. Mountford. Though perhaps it proved him more wrong than ever, it restored him to all the ease of family intercourse which had been impeded of late. And it set the whole house right. Anne, who had been in the shade, behind backs, resigning many of her usual activities on various pretences, came back naturally to her old place. It was like a transformation scene. And everybody was puzzled, from Mrs. Mountford, who could not understand it at all, and Heathcote, who divined that some compromise had been effected, to the servants, whose interest in Miss Anne rose into new warmth, and who concluded that she had found means at last ‘to come over master,’ which was just what they expected from her. After this everything went on very smoothly, as if the wheels of life had been freshly oiled, and velvet spread over all its roughnesses. Even the preparations for the ball proceeded with far more spirit than before. The old wainscoted banqueting-room, which had not been used for a long time, though it was the pride of the house, was cleared for dancing, and Anne had already begun to superintend the decoration of it. Everything went on more briskly from the moment that she took it in hand, for none of the languid workers had felt that there was any seriousness in the preparations till Anne assumed the direction of them. Heathcote, who was making acquaintance very gradually with the differing characters of the household, understood this sudden activity less than anything before. ‘Is it for love of dancing?’ he said. Anne laughed and shook her head.
‘I don’t know that I shall enjoy this ball much; but I am not above dancing—and I enjoy this,’ she said. ‘I like to be doing something.’ To have regained her own sense of self-command, her superiority to circumstances, made this magnanimous young woman happy in her downfall. She liked the knowledge that she was magnanimous almost more than the good fortune and prosperity which she had lost. She had got over her misfortunes. She gave her head a little toss aloft, shaking off all shadows, as she ran hither and thither, the soul of everything. She had got the upper hand of fate.
As for Mr. Mountford, he had a great deal more patience about the details of the approaching entertainment when Anne took them in hand. Either she managed to make them amusing to him, or the additional reality in the whole matter, from the moment she put herself at the head of affairs, had a corresponding effect upon her father. Perhaps, indeed, a little feeling of making up to her, by a more than ordinary readiness to accept all her lesser desires, was in his mind. His moroseness melted away. He forgot his alarm about his health and Mr. Loseby’s ugly words. It is possible, indeed, that he might have succeeded in forgetting altogether what he had done, or at least regaining his feeling that it was a mere expedient to overawe Anne and bring her into order, liable to be changed as everything changes—even wills, when there are long years before the testator—but for the two sealed envelopes in his drawer which he could not help seeing every time he opened it. A day or two before the ball some business called him into Hunston, and he took them out with a half smile, weighing them in his hand. Should he carry them with him and put them in Loseby’s charge? or should he leave them there? He half laughed at the ridiculous expedient to which Loseby’s words had driven him, and looked at the two letters jocularly; but in the end he determined to take them, it would be as well to put them in old Loseby’s hands. Heathcote volunteered to ride with him as he had done before. It was again a bright calm day, changed only in so far as November is different from October. There had been stormy weather in the meantime, and the trees were almost bare; but still it was fine and bright. Anne came out from the hall and stood on the steps to see them ride off. She gave them several commissions: to inquire at the bookseller’s for the ball programmes, and to carry to the haberdasher’s a note of something Mrs. Worth wanted. She kissed her hand to her father as he rode away, and his penitent heart gave him a prick. ‘You would not think that was a girl that had just been cut off with a shilling,’ he said, half mournfully (as if it had been a painful necessity), and half with parental braggadocio, proud of her pluck and spirit.
‘I thought you must have changed your mind,’ Heathcote said.
Mr. Mountford shook his head and said, ‘No, worse luck. I have not changed my mind.’
This was the only expression of changed sentiment to which he gave vent. When they called at Mr. Loseby’s, the lawyer received them with a mixture of satisfaction and alarm. ‘What’s up now?’ he said, coming out of the door of his private room to receive them. ‘I thought I should see you presently.’ But when he was offered the two sealed letters Mr. Loseby drew back his hand as if he had been stung. ‘You have been making another will,’ he said, ‘all by yourself, to ruin your family and make work for us lawyers after you are dead and gone.’
‘No,’ said Mr. Mountford, eagerly, ‘no, no—it is only some stipulations.’