‘He is a character,’ said Mr. Mountford, with a short laugh, as they rode away. But that laugh was the only sound of the lighter sort that broke the gravity of their silent companionship, as their horses’ hoofs clattered over the stones of the little town, and came out upon the long silence of the country road now falling rapidly into twilight. ‘We are a little late,’ Mr. Mountford said, half-an-hour after. As for Heathcote, he did not feel, any more than his kinsman, in a humour for talk. What he had heard, though he had protested against hearing it, dwelt in his mind, and the somewhat morose gravity of the other infected him in spite of himself. What had St. John Mountford, who was in reality a commonplace, good enough sort of man, been doing to warrant so gloomy an aspect? Had he been turning the fortunes of the family upside down and spoiling the life of the daughter he loved best? or was it a mere exhibition of sulkiness consequent upon the quarrel with the lawyer and the opposition he had encountered? Heathcote had known nothing about these Mountfords a week ago, and now how closely he felt himself knitted up in their affairs, whether he continued to be formally connected with them or not! As he rode along in silence by his kinsman’s side, he could not help thinking of the catastrophe which might be coming; that ‘fine creature’ Anne--the little old bald shining lawyer had grown eloquent when he spoke of her. And though she seemed a little severe to Heathcote, he could not but acknowledge to himself that she had always interested him. Rose? oh, Rose was a pretty little thing, a child, a nobody; it did not matter very much what happened to her; but if it should happen that Anne’s life was being changed, the brightness taken out of it, and all those advantages which seem so natural and becoming transferred from her to the profit of Rose? Heathcote felt that this would be a wrong to move heaven and earth; but it was not a subject in which he, a stranger, had any right to interfere. As he looked at the dark muffled figure of her father by his side against the faint crimson which still lingered in the west, he could scarcely help chafing at the thought that, though he was their nearest relation, he was still a stranger, and must not, dared not say a word. And what kind of fellow, he said to himself, in natural indignation, could it be who was wilfully leading Anne into the wilderness, accepting her sacrifice of that which was the very foundation of her life? Perhaps had he himself been the man who loved Anne he would have seen things in a different light; but from his present point of view his mind was full of angry wrath and contempt for the unknown who could let a girl inexperienced in the world give up so much for him. He was a nobody, they said. He must be a poor sort of creature, Heathcote, on these very insufficient grounds, decided in his heart.