This was the only expression of changed sentiment to which he gave vent. When they called at Mr. Loseby’s, the lawyer received them with a mixture of satisfaction and alarm. ‘What’s up now?’ he said, coming out of the door of his private room to receive them. ‘I thought I should see you presently.’ But when he was offered the two sealed letters Mr. Loseby drew back his hand as if he had been stung. ‘You have been making another will,’ he said, ‘all by yourself, to ruin your family and make work for us lawyers after you are dead and gone.’ ‘No,’ said Mr. Mountford, eagerly, ‘no, no--it is only some stipulations.’ The packets were each inscribed with a legend on the outside, and the lawyer was afraid of them. He took them gingerly with the ends of his fingers, and let them drop into one of the boxes which lined his walls. As for Mr. Mountford, he became more jaunty and pleased with himself every moment. He went to the haberdasher’s for Mrs. Worth, and to the stationer’s to get the programmes which had been ordered for the ball. He was more cheerful than his companion had ever seen him. He opened the subject of the entail of his own accord as they went along. ‘Loseby is coming for the ball: it is a kind of thing he likes; and then we shall talk it over,’ he said. Perhaps in doing this a way might be found of setting things straight, independent of these sealed packets, which, however, in the meantime, were a kind of sop to fate, a propitiation to Nemesis. Then they rode home in cheerful talk. By the time night fell they had got into the park; and though the trees stood up bare against the dark blue sky, and the grass looked too wet and spongy for pleasant riding, there was still some beauty in the dusky landscape. Mount, framed in its trees and showing in the distance the cheerful glow of its lights, had come in sight. ‘It is a pleasant thing to come home, and to know that one is looked for and always welcome,’ Mr. Mountford said. Heathcote had turned round to answer, with some words on his lips about his own less happy lot, when suddenly the figure at his side dropped out of the dusk around them. There was a muffled noise, a floundering of horse’s hoofs, a dark heap upon the grass, moving, struggling, yet only half discernible in the gloom, over which he almost stumbled and came to the ground also, so sudden was the fall. His own horse swerved violently, just escaping its companion’s hoof. And through the darkness there ran a sharp broken cry, and then a groan: which of them came from his own lips Heathcote did not know. CHAPTER XIX. THE CATASTROPHE.