All was pleasant commotion and stir in Mount, where almost every room had received some addition to its decoration. On this particular evening there was a great show of candles in the old banqueting hall, which was to be the ballroom, and great experiments in lighting were going on. The ball at Mount was stirring the whole county. In all the houses about there was more or less commotion, toilets preparing, an additional thrill of liveliness and pleasure sent into the quiet country life. And Mount itself was all astir. Standing outside, it was pretty to watch the lights walking about the full house, gliding along the long corridors, gleaming at windows along the whole breadth of the rambling old place. With all these lights streaming out into the night, the house seemed to warm the evening air, which was now white with inevitable mists over the park. Rose ran about like a child, delighted with the stir, dragging holly wreaths after her, and holding candles to all the workers; but Anne had the real work in hand. It was to her the carpenters came for their orders, and the servants who never knew from one half-hour to another what next was to be done. Mrs. Mountford had taken the supper under her charge, and sat serenely over her worsted work, in the consciousness that whatever might go wrong, that, at least, would be right. ‘As for your decorations, I wash my hands of them,’ she said. It was Anne upon whom all these cares fell. And though she was by no means sure that she would enjoy the ball, it was quite certain, as she had said to Heathcote, that she enjoyed _this_. She enjoyed the sensation of being herself again, and able to throw herself into this occupation with a fine indifference to her own personal standing in the house. If she had been dethroned in the will, only herself could dethrone her in nature. She felt, as she wished to feel, that she was above all that; that she was not even under the temptation of sullenness, and had no sense of injury to turn the sweet into bitter. She went about holding her head consciously a little higher than usual, as with a gay defiance of all things that could pull her down. Who could pull her down, save herself? And what was the use of personal happiness, of that inspiration and exhilaration of love which was in her veins, if it did not make her superior to all little external misfortunes? She felt magnanimous, and to feel so seemed to compensate her for everything else. It would have been strange, indeed, she said to herself, if the mere loss of a fortune had sufficed to crush the spirit of a happy woman, a woman beloved, with a great life before her. She smiled at fate in her faith and happiness. Her head borne higher than usual, thrown back a little, her eyes shining, a smile, in which some fine contempt for outside trouble just touched the natural sweetness of her youth, to which, after all, it was so natural to take pleasure in all that she was about--all these signs