Heathcote got up from his chair with a start, and walked about the room in a nervous impatience, for which he could give no reason to himself. Was it that he, too, wished he had come to Mount a year sooner? He left the old man to finish his wine, and roamed about, now pausing a moment with his back to the fire, now extending his walk into the dark corners. He had lit his cigarette, which furnished him with an excuse--but he was not thinking of his cigarette. What he was thinking was--What the devil did that fellow mean by staying away now? Why didn’t he come and stand by her like a man? What sort of a pitiful cur was he that he didn’t come, now he was free to do it, and stand by her like a man? He disposed of Charley Ashley’s mild plea with still greater impatience. Perhaps she had forbidden him to come. ‘Would I have been kept away by any forbidding?’ Heathcote said to himself without knowing it. Then he came back from the corners in which such suggestions lay, feeling uneasy, feeling wroth and uncomfortable, and took his stand again before the fire. ‘Perhaps you will give me a little advice about the money I wanted,’ he said to Mr. Loseby. This was safer on the whole than suffering himself to stray into foolish fancies as to what he would have done, or would not have done, supposing an impossible case--supposing he had made his appearance a year sooner; before there was any complication of any unsatisfactory ‘fellow’ with the image of his cousin Anne. CHAPTER XXII. SOPHISTRY.