‘I am glad to hear you laugh,’ said Mrs. Mountford, ‘for that shows you are not so much on your high horse as I fancied you were. And yours is such a very high horse, my dear! No, I don’t mean to say you were not referred to, for you would not believe me; there was some talk about you; but papa said he had spoken to you himself, and I never make nor meddle between him and you, as you know, Anne. It was something quite different. We are not going to Brighton, Rosie; some one is coming here.’ ‘Oh--h!’ Rose’s countenance fell. Brighton, which was a break upon the monotony of the country, was always welcome to her. ‘And even Willie Ashley gone away!’ was the apparently irrelevant observation she made, with a sudden drooping of the corners of her mouth. ‘What is Willie Ashley to you? you can’t have your game in winter,’ said her mother, with unconscious cynicism; ‘but there is somebody coming who is really interesting. I don’t know that you have ever seen him; I have seen him only once in my life. I thought him the most interesting-looking man I ever saw; he was like a hero on the stage, tall and dark, with a natural curl in his hair; and such eyes!’ Rose’s blue and inexperienced orbs grew round and large with excitement. ‘Who is it? No one we ever saw; oh, no, indeed, I never saw a man a bit like that. Who is it, mamma?’ Mrs. Mountford liked to prolong the excitement. It pleased her to have so interesting a piece of news in hand. Besides, Anne remained perfectly unmoved, and to excite Rose was too easy. ‘He is a man with a story too,’ she said. ‘When he was quite young he was in love with a lady, a very grand personage, indeed, quite out of the reach of a poor gentleman like--this gentleman. She was an Italian, and I believe she was a princess or something. That does not mean the same as it does here, you know; but she was a great deal grander than he was, and her friends would not let her marry him.’ ‘And what happened?’ cried Rose breathless, as her mother came to an artful pause. Anne did not say anything, but she leant forward, and her eyes too had lighted up with interest. It was no part of Mrs. Mountford’s plan to interest Anne, but, once entered upon her story, the desire of the artist for appreciation seized upon her. ‘What could happen, my dear?’ she said, pointedly adding a moral; ‘they gave everybody a great deal of trouble for a time, as young people who are crossed in anything always do; but people abroad make very short work with these matters. The lady was married, of course, to somebody in her own rank of life.’ ‘And the gentleman?--it was the gentleman you were telling us about.’ ‘The gentleman--poor Heathcote! well, he has got on well enough--I suppose as well as other people. He has never married; but then I don’t see how he could marry, for he has nothing to marry upon.’ ‘Heathcote! do you mean Heathcote Mountford?’