‘But if your father had carried out his intention——’
‘Do you know,’ said Anne, looking at him with a half wistful, half smiling look, ‘on second thoughts it would perhaps be better not to say anything to mamma or Rose about my father’s intention? They might think it strange. They might say that was no punishment at all. I am very glad to know it for my own comfort, and that you should understand how really just he was; but they might not see it in the same light.’
‘And it has nothing to do with the question,’ said Heathcote, almost roughly; ‘the opportunity for such an arrangement is over. Whether he intended or whether he did not intend it—I cannot give you Mount.’
‘No, no; certainly you cannot give it to me——’
‘At least,’ he cried, carried beyond himself by the excitement of the moment. ‘There was only one way in which I could have given it to you: and that, without ever leaving me the chance, without thinking of any claim I had, you have put out of my power—you have made impossible, Anne!’
She looked at him, her eyes opened wider, her lips dropping apart, with a sort of consternation, then a tinge of warmer colour gradually rose over her face. The almost fierceness of his tone, the aggrieved voice and expression had something half ludicrous in it; but in her surprise this was not visible to Anne. And he saw that he had startled her, which is always satisfactory. She owed him reparation for this, though it was an unintentional wrong. He ended with a severity of indignation which overwhelmed her.
‘It does not seem to me that I was ever thought of, that anyone took me into consideration. I was never allowed to have a chance. Before I came here, my place, the place I might have claimed, was appropriated. And now I must keep Mount though I do not want it, and you must leave it though you do want it, when our interests might have been one. But no, no, I am mistaken. You do not want it now, though it is your home. You think you will prefer London, because London is——’
‘Mr. Heathcote Mountford, I think you forget what you are saying——’
‘Don’t call me that at least,’ he cried; ‘don’t thrust me away again as a stranger. Yes, I am absurd; I have no right to claim any place or any rights. If I had not been a fool, I should have come here a year, five years ago, as old Loseby says.’
‘What is that about old Loseby?’ said the lawyer, coming into the room. He was carrying a portfolio in his hands, which, let us hope, he had honestly gone to look for when he left them. Anyhow he carried it ostentatiously as if this had been his natural object in his absence. But the others were too much excited to notice his portfolio or his severely business air. At least Heathcote was excited, who felt that he had evidently made a fool of himself, and had given vent to a bit of ridiculous emotion, quite uncalled for, without any object, and originating he could not tell how. What was the meaning of it, he would have asked himself, but that the fumes of his own words had got into his head. He turned away, quite beyond his own control, when the lawyer appeared, his heart beating, his blood coursing through his veins. How had all this tempest got up in an instant? Did it come from nothing, and mean nothing? or had it been there within him, lying quiescent all this time. He could not answer the question, nor, indeed, for that matter, did he ask it, being much too fully occupied for the moment with the commotion which had thus suddenly got up like the boiling of a volcano within him, without any will of his own.