The change that is made in a quiet house in the country when the chief source of life and emotion is closed for one or other of the inhabitants is such a thing as ‘was never said in rhyme.’ There may be nothing tragical, nothing final about it, but it penetrates through every hour and every occupation. The whole scheme of living seems changed, although there may be no change in any habit. It is, indeed, the very sameness and unity of the life, the way in which every little custom survives, in which the feet follow the accustomed round, the eyes survey the same things, the very same words come to the lips that make the difference so palpable. This was what Anne Mountford felt now. To outward seeming her existence was absolutely as before. It was not an exciting life, but it had been a happy one. Her mind was active and strong, and capable of sustaining itself. Even in the warm and soft stagnation of her home, her life had been like a running stream always in movement, turning off at unexpected corners, flowing now in one direction, now another, making unexpected leaps and variations of its own. She had the wholesome love of new things and employments which keeps life fresh; and there had scarcely been a week in which she had not had some new idea or other, quickly copied and turned into matter-of-fact prose by her little sister. This had made Mount lively even when there was nothing going on. And for months together nothing did go on at Mount. It was not a great country house filled with fashionable visitors in the autumn and winter, swept clean of all its inhabitants in spring. The Mountfords stayed at home all the year round, unless it were at the fall of the leaf, when sometimes they would go to Brighton, sometimes at the very deadest season to town. They had nobody to visit them except an occasional old friend belonging to some other county family, who understood the kind of life and lived the same at home. On these occasions if the friend were a little superior they would ask Lord and Lady Meadowlands to dinner, but if not they would content themselves with the clergymen of the two neighbouring parishes, and the Woodheads, whose house was not much more than a villa. Lately, since the girls grew up, the ‘game’ in the afternoon which brought young visitors to the house in summer had added to the mild amusements of this life; but the young people who came were always the same, and so were the old people in the village, who had to be visited, and to have flannels prepared for them against Christmas, and their savings taken care of. When a young man ‘went wrong,’ or a girl got into trouble, it made the greatest excitement in the parish. ‘Did you hear that Sally Lawson came home to her mother on Saturday, sent away from her place at a moment’s notice?’ or: ‘Old Gubbins’s boy has enlisted. Did you ever hear anything so sad--the one the rector took so much pains with, and helped on so in his education?’ It was very sad for the Gubbinses and Lawsons, but it was a great godsend to the parish. And when Lady Meadowlands’ mother, old Lady Prayrey Poule, went and married, actually _married_ at sixty, it did the very county, not to speak of those parishes which had the best right to the news, good. This was the way in which life passed at Mount. And hitherto Anne had supplemented and made it lively with a hundred pursuits of her own. Even up to the beginning of August, when Mr. Douglas, who had left various reminiscences behind him of his Christmas visit, came back--having enjoyed himself so much on the previous occasion, as he said--Anne had continued in full career of those vigorous fancies which kept her always interested. She had sketched indefatigably all the spring and early summer, growing almost fanatical about the tenderness of the shadows and the glory of the lights. Then finding the cottages, which were so picturesque, and figured in so many sketches, to be too wretched for habitation, though they were inhabited, she had rushed into building, into plans, and elevations, and measurements, which it was difficult to force Mr. Mountford’s attention to, but which were evidently a step in the right direction. But on Douglas’s second arrival these occupations had been unconsciously intermitted, they had been pushed aside by a hundred little engagements which the Ashleys had managed to make for the entertainment of their friend. There had been several pic-nics, and a party at the rectory--the first since Mrs. Ashley’s death--and a party at the Woodheads’, the only other people in the parish capable of entertaining.