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.