The much-expected visitor arrived in the twilight of an October evening just before dinner, and his first introduction to the family was in the indistinct light of the fire--one of the first fires of the season, which lighted up the drawing-room with a fitful ruddy blaze shining upon the white dresses of the girls, but scarcely revealing the elder people in their darker garments. A man in evening dress very often looks his best: but he does not look romantic--he does not look like a hero--the details of his appearance are too much like those of everybody else. Anne, looking at him breathlessly, trying to get a satisfactory impression of him when the light leaped up for a moment, found him too vigorous, too large, too life-like for her fastidious fancy; but Rose was made perfectly happy by the appearance of a man with whom it would not be at all necessary, she thought, to be upon stilts. The sound of his voice when he spoke dispersed ever so many visions. It was not too serious, as the younger sister had feared. It had not the lofty composure which the elder had hoped. He gave his arm to Mrs. Mountford with the air of a man not the least detached from his fellow-creatures. ‘There will be a frost to-night,’ he said; ‘it is very cold outside; but it is worth while being out in the cold to come into a cosy room like this.’ Charley Ashley would have said the very same had it been he who had walked up to dinner from the rectory. Heathcote had not been in the house for years, not perhaps ever since all _that_ had happened, yet he spoke about the cosy room like any chance visitor. It would not be too much to say that there was a certain disgust in the revulsion with which Anne turned from him, though no doubt it was premature to pass judgment on him in the first five minutes like this.