gravely: would he mind? what would he say? but the smile came without her knowledge. What could he say but one thing? If it had been another man, there might have been doubts and hesitations--but Cosmo! The smile stole to the corners of her mouth--a melting softness came into her heart. How little need was there to question! Did not she _know_? Her thoughts were so full of this that she did not hear another foot on the gravel, and when Heathcote spoke she awakened with a start, and came down out of that lofty hermitage of her thoughts with little satisfaction; but when he said something of the beauty of the night and the fascination of all those voices of the wind and woods, Anne, whether willingly or not, felt herself compelled to be civil. She came down from her abstraction, admitting, politely, that the night was fine. ‘But,’ she said, ‘it is very cold, and the wind is rising every moment; I was thinking of going in.’ ‘I wonder if you would wait for a few minutes, Miss Mountford, and hear something I have to say.’ ‘Certainly,’ Anne said; but she was surprised; and now that it was no longer her own will which kept her here, the wind all at once became very boisterous, and the ‘silver lights and darks’ dreary. ‘Do you know we have a ghost belonging to us?’ she said. ‘She haunts that lime avenue. We ought to see her to-night.’ ‘We have so little time for ghosts,’ said Heathcote, almost fretfully; and then he added, ‘Miss Mountford, I came to Mount on a special mission. Will you let me tell you what it was? I came to offer your father my co-operation in breaking the entail.’ ‘Breaking the entail!’ the idea was so surprising that all who heard it received it with the same exclamation. As for Anne, she did more: she cast one rapid involuntary glance around her upon the house with all its lights, the familiar garden, the waving clouds of trees. In her heart she felt as if a sharp arrow of possible delight, despair, she knew not which, struck her keenly to the core. It was only for a moment. Then she drew a long breath and said, ‘You bewilder me altogether; break the entail--why should you? I cannot comprehend it. Pardon me, it is as if the Prince of Wales said he would not have the crown. Mount is England to us Mountfords. I cannot understand what you mean.’