But it was December before they got away. After all it turned out that ‘mother and the boys’ had more weight with Keziah than Rose’s offer, and the promise of superior advantage in the future; and she was left in the cottage she came from, preparing her wedding things, and learning by daily experiment how impossible it would have been to content herself with a similar cottage, weak tea, bad butter, and fat bacon, instead of the liberal _régime_ of the servants’ hall, which Rose had freely and graphically described as meaning ‘three or four nice luncheons a day.’ The Mountfords finally departed with very little sentiment; everything was provided for, even the weekly wreath on the grave, and there was nothing for anyone to reproach herself with. Anne, as usual, was the one who felt the separation most. She was going to Cosmo’s constant society, and to the enjoyment of many things she had pined for all her life. Yet the visionary wrench, the total rending asunder of life and all that was implied in it, affected her more than she could say, more than, in the calm of the others, there seemed any reason for. She went out the day before for a long farewell walk, while Rose was still superintending her packing. Anne made a long round through the people in the village, glad that the women should cry, and that there should be some sign here at least of more natural sentiment--and into the Rectory, where she penetrated to the Rector’s study, and was standing by him with her hand upon his arm before he was aware. ‘I have come to say good-bye,’ she said--looking at him with a smile, yet tears in her eyes. The Rector rose to his feet hastily and took her into his arms. ‘God bless you, my dear child! but you might have been sure I would have come to see the last of you, to bid you farewell at the carriage door----’ ‘Yes,’ said Anne, clinging to her old friend, ‘but that is not like good-bye here, is it? where I have always been allowed to come to you, all my life.’ ‘And always shall!’ cried the Rector, ‘whenever you want me, howsoever I can be of any use to you!’ The Curate came in while they were still clinging to each other, talking, as people will do when their hearts are full, of one who was no longer there to be bidden good-bye to--the Rector’s wife, for whom he went mourning always, and who had been fond of Anne. Thus she said her farewell both to the living and the dead. Charley walked solemnly by her side up to the park gates. He did not say much; his heart was as heavy as lead in his breast. ‘I don’t know how the world is to go on without you,’ he said; ‘but I suppose it will, all the same.’ ‘After a while it will not make much difference,’ said Anne.