Heathcote was very sympathetic. He gave a friendly pressure to the arm that had come to be linked in his as they went along. The Curate had not been able to disburden his soul to anyone in these days past, when it had been so sorely impressed upon him that, though he could work for Anne, it was not his to stand by her and give her the truest support. Heathcote was sympathetic, and yet he could scarcely help smiling within himself at this good faithful soul, who, it was clear, had ventured to love Anne too, and, though so faithful still, had an inward wonder that it had been the other and not himself that had been chosen. The looker-on could have laughed, though he was so sorry. Anne, after all, he reflected, with what he felt to be complete impartiality, though only a country girl, was not the sort of young woman to be appropriated by a curate: that this good, heavy, lumbering fellow should sigh over her choice of another, without seeing in a moment that he and such as he was impossible! However, he pressed Charley’s arm in sympathy, even though he could not refrain from this half derision in his heart. ‘He might have stayed at the rectory,’ Charley continued; ‘that is what I proposed--of course he could not have gone to Mount without an invitation. I had got his room all ready; I sent our old man up to meet two trains. I never for a moment supposed--Willie, of course, never thought twice. He came off from Cambridge as a matter of course.’ ‘As any one would----’ said Heathcote. ‘Unless they had been specially forbidden to do it--there is always that to be taken into account.’