The packing up kept the house in commotion, and it was curious how little feeling there was, how little of the desolation of parting, the sense of breaking up a long-established home. The pleasure of freedom and expectations of a new life were great even with Mrs. Mountford: and Rose’s little decorous sorrow had long ago worked itself out. ‘Some natural tears she dropped, but wiped them soon.’ And it did not give these ladies any great pang to leave Mount. They were not leaving it really, they said to themselves. So long as the furniture was there, which was Mrs. Mountford’s, it was still their house, though the walls of it belonged to Heathcote--and then, if Heathcote ‘came forward,’ as Mrs. Mountford, at least, believed he would do----. Rose did not think anything at all about this. At first, no doubt, it had appeared to her as rather a triumph, to win the affections of the heir of entail, and to have it in her power to assume the position of head of the house, as her mother had done. But, as the sniff of the freshening breeze came to her from the unseen seas on which she was about to launch forth, Rose began to feel more disdain than pleasure for such easy triumphs. Cousin Heathcote was handsome, but he was elderly--thirty-five! and she was only eighteen. No doubt there were finer things in the unknown than any she had yet caught sight of; and what was Mount? a mere simple country house, not half so grand as Meadowlands--that the possible possession of it in the future should so much please a rich girl with a good fortune and everything in her favour. Leaving home did not really count for much in her mind, as she made her little individual preparations. The future seemed her own, the past was not important one way or another. And having given her sister the benefit of her advice with such decision, she felt herself still more able to advise Keziah, who cried as she put up Miss Rose’s things. On the whole, perhaps, there was more fellowship between Keziah and Rose than the little maid felt with the more serious Anne, who was so much older than herself, though the same age. ‘I would not have married Saymore if I had been you,’ said Rose. ‘You will never know anything more than Hunston all your life now, Keziah. You should have come with me into the world. At Mount, or in a little country place, how could you ever see anybody? You have had no choice at all--Jim, whom you never could have married, and now old Saymore. I suppose your aunt thinks it is a great thing for you--but I don’t think it a great thing. If you had come with us, you might have done so much better. I wish you had consulted me----’ ‘So do I, Miss Rose,’ said Keziah, dropping tears into the box, which, fortunately, contained only boots and shoes, and articles which would not mark. ‘Oh! I wish I had talked to you at the very first! but I was distracted like, Miss Rose, about poor Jim, and I couldn’t think of anything else.’