I did post why I thought Willoughby’s presence near the cottage was suspicious. I did not say Willoughby hoped to find pretty girls at the cottage but rather that he probably knew there were pretty girls at Barton Cottage from his aunt. (:D) Willoughby said in Ch. 14: “the very first news I should hear from Mrs. Smith …that Barton cottage was taken” and climbing the hill he has probably passed the gate of the cottage. Per Ch. 9 the girls were: ”…running with all possible speed down the steep side of the hill which led immediately to their garden gate” That Willoughby would be interested in seeing-perhaps meeting the young ladies at the cottage and walked past the gate to put himself in a way so that it might happen sooner rather than later is not such a stretch in my opinion. Additionally, the narrator describes Willoughby scoping out rising beauties season after season to determine if they are worth his attention: many a rising beauty would be slighted by him in after days as bearing no comparison with Mrs. Brandon (Ch. 50). I cannot help but wonder if any of these rising (young, most likely unworldly) beauties might be a future target of Willoughby’s attention and perhaps as he described “giving way to feelings which I had always been too much in the habit of indulging” in Ch. 44.