"And how will you answer it?"

Nora paused again before she replied. "As nearly as I know how to do in such words as he would put into my mouth. I shall strive to write just what I think he would wish me to write."

"Then you will engage yourself to him, Nora?"

"Certainly I shall. I am engaged to him already. I have been ever since he came here."

"You told me that there was nothing of the kind."

"I told you that I loved him better than anybody in the world, and that ought to have made you know what it must come to. When I am thinking of him every day, and every hour, how can I not be glad to have an engagement settled with him? I couldn't marry anybody else, and I don't want to remain as I am." The tears came into the married sister's eyes, and rolled down her cheeks, as this was said to her.

Would it not have been better for her had she remained as she was?

"Dear Emily," said Nora, "you have got Louey still."

"Yes;--and they mean to take him from me. But I do not wish to speak of myself. Will you postpone your answer till mamma is here?"

"I cannot do that, Emily. What; receive such a letter as that, and send no reply to it!"

"I would write a line for you, and explain--"

"No, indeed, Emily. I choose to answer my own letters. I have shewn you that, because I trust you; but I have fully made up my mind as to what I shall write. It will have been written and sent before dinner."

"I think you will be wrong, Nora."

"Why wrong! When I came over here to stay with you, would mamma ever have thought of directing me not to accept any offer till her consent had been obtained all the way from the Mandarins? She would never have dreamed of such a thing."

"Will you ask Aunt Mary?"

"Certainly not. What is Aunt Mary to me? We are here in her house for a time, under the press of circ.u.mstances; but I owe her no obedience.

She told Mr. Stanbury not to come here; and he has not come; and I shall not ask him to come. I would not willingly bring any one into Uncle Oliphant's house that he and she do not wish to see. But I will not admit that either of them have any authority over me."

"Then who has, dearest?"

"n.o.body;--except papa and mamma; and they have chosen to leave me to myself."

Mrs. Trevelyan found it impossible to shake her sister's firmness, and could herself do nothing, except tell Mrs. Outhouse what was the state of affairs. When she said that she should do this, there almost came to be a flow of high words between the two sisters; but at last Nora a.s.sented. "As for knowing, I don't care if all the world knows it. I shall do nothing in a corner. I don't suppose Aunt Mary will endeavour to prevent my posting my letter."

Emily at last went to seek Mrs. Outhouse, and Nora at once sat down to her desk. Neither of the sisters felt at all sure that Mrs.

Outhouse would not attempt to stop the emission of the letter from her house; but, as it happened, she was out, and did not return till Nora had come back from her journey to the neighbouring post-office.

She would trust her letter, when written, to no hands but her own; and as she herself dropped it into the safe custody of the Postmaster-General, it also shall be revealed to the public:--

Parsonage, St. Diddulph's, January, 186--.

DEAR HUGH,

For I suppose I may as well write to you in that way now.

I have been made so happy by your affectionate letter. Is not that a candid confession for a young lady? But you tell me that I owe you the truth, and so I tell you the truth. n.o.body will ever be anything to me, except you; and you are everything. I do love you; and should it ever be possible, I will become your wife.

I have said so much, because I feel that I ought to obey the order you have given me; but pray do not try to see me or write to me till mamma has arrived. She and papa will be here in the spring,--quite early in the spring, we hope; and then you may come to us. What they may say, of course, I cannot tell; but I shall be true to you.

Your own, with truest affection,

NORA.

Of course, you knew that I loved you, and I don't think that you are a conjuror at all.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Nora's letter.]

As soon as ever the letter was written, she put on her bonnet, and went forth with it herself to the post-office. Mrs. Trevelyan stopped her on the stairs, and endeavoured to detain her, but Nora would not be detained. "I must judge for myself about this," she said. "If mamma were here, it would be different, but, as she is not here, I must judge for myself."

What Mrs. Outhouse might have done had she been at home at the time, it would be useless to surmise. She was told what had happened when it occurred, and questioned Nora on the subject. "I thought I understood from you," she said, with something of severity in her countenance, "that there was to be nothing between you and Mr.

Stanbury--at any rate, till my brother came home?"

"I never pledged myself to anything of the kind, Aunt Mary," Nora said. "I think he promised that he would not come here, and I don't suppose that he means to come. If he should do so, I shall not see him."

With this Mrs. Outhouse was obliged to be content. The letter was gone, and could not be stopped. Nor, indeed, had any authority been delegated to her by which she would have been justified in stopping it. She could only join her husband in wishing that they both might be relieved, as soon as possible, from the terrible burden which had been thrown upon them. "I call it very hard," said Mr.

Outhouse;--"very hard, indeed. If we were to desire them to leave the house, everybody would cry out upon us for our cruelty; and yet, while they remain here, they will submit themselves to no authority.

As far as I can see, they may, both of them, do just what they please, and we can't stop it."

CHAPTER LIV.

MR. GIBSON'S THREAT.

Miss Stanbury for a long time persisted in being neither better nor worse. Sir Peter would not declare her state to be precarious, nor would he say that she was out of danger; and Mr. Martin had been so utterly prostrated by the nearly-fatal effects of his own mistake that he was quite unable to rally himself and talk on the subject with any spirit or confidence. When interrogated he would simply reply that Sir Peter said this and Sir Peter said that, and thus add to, rather than diminish, the doubt, and excitement, and varied opinion which prevailed through the city. On one morning it was absolutely a.s.serted within the limits of the Close that Miss Stanbury was dying,--and it was believed for half a day at the bank that she was then lying in articulo mortis. There had got about, too, a report that a portion of the property had only been left to Miss Stanbury for her life, that the Burgesses would be able to reclaim the houses in the city, and that a will had been made altogether in favour of Dorothy, cutting out even Brooke from any share in the inheritance;--and thus Exeter had a good deal to say respecting the affairs and state of health of our old friend. Miss Stanbury's illness, however, was true enough. She was much too ill to hear anything of what was going on;--too ill to allow Martha to talk to her at all about the outside public. When the invalid herself would ask questions about the affairs of the world, Martha would be very discreet and turn away from the subject. Miss Stanbury, for instance, ill as she was, exhibited a most mundane interest, not exactly in Camilla French's marriage, but in the delay which that marriage seemed destined to encounter. "I dare say he'll slip out of it yet,"

said the sick lady to her confidential servant. Then Martha had thought it right to change the subject, feeling it to be wrong that an old lady on her death-bed should be taking joy in the disappointment of her young neighbour. Martha changed the subject, first to jelly, and then to the psalms of the day. Miss Stanbury was too weak to resist; but the last verse of the last psalm of the evening had hardly been finished before she remarked that she would never believe it till she saw it. "It's all in the hands of Him as is on high, mum," said Martha, turning her eyes up to the ceiling, and closing the book at the same time, with a look strongly indicative of displeasure.

Miss Stanbury understood it all as well as though she were in perfect health. She knew her own failings, was conscious of her worldly tendencies, and perceived that her old servant was thinking of it.

And then sundry odd thoughts, half-digested thoughts, ideas too difficult for her present strength, crossed her brain. Had it been wicked of her when she was well to hope that a scheming woman should not succeed in betraying a man by her schemes into an ill-a.s.sorted marriage; and if not wicked then, was it wicked now because she was ill? And from that thought her mind travelled on to the ordinary practices of death-bed piety. Could an a.s.sumed devotion be of use to her now,--such a devotion as Martha was enjoining upon her from hour to hour, in pure and affectionate solicitude for her soul? She had spoken one evening of a game of cards, saying that a game of cribbage would have consoled her. Then Martha, with a shudder, had suggested a hymn, and had had recourse at once to a sleeping draught. Miss Stanbury had submitted, but had understood it all. If cards were wicked, she had indeed been a terrible sinner. What hope could there be now, on her death-bed, for one so sinful? And she could not repent of her cards, and would not try to repent of them, not seeing the evil of them; and if they were innocent, why should she not have the consolation now,--when she so much wanted it? Yet she knew that the whole household, even Dorothy, would be in arms against her, were she to suggest such a thing. She took the hymn and the sleeping draught, telling herself that it would be best for her to banish such ideas from her mind. Pastors and masters had laid down for her a mode of living, which she had followed, but indifferently perhaps, but still with an intention of obedience. They had also laid down a mode of dying, and it would be well that she should follow that as closely as possible. She would say nothing more about cards. She would think nothing more of Camilla French. But, as she so resolved, with intellect half asleep, with her mind wandering between fact and dream, she was unconsciously comfortable with an a.s.surance that if Mr. Gibson did marry Camilla French, Camilla French would lead him the very devil of a life.

During three days Dorothy went about the house as quiet as a mouse, sitting nightly at her aunt's bedside, and tending the sick woman with the closest care. She, too, had been now and again somewhat startled by the seeming worldliness of her aunt in her illness. Her aunt talked to her about rents, and gave her messages for Brooke Burgess on subjects which seemed to Dorothy to be profane when spoken of on what might perhaps be a death-bed. And this struck her the more strongly, because she had a matter of her own on which she would have much wished to ascertain her aunt's opinion, if she had not thought that it would have been exceedingly wrong of her to trouble her aunt's mind at such a time by any such matter. Hitherto she had said not a word of Brooke's proposal to any living being. At present it was a secret with herself, but a secret so big that it almost caused her bosom to burst with the load that it bore. She could not, she thought, write to Priscilla till she had told her aunt. If she were to write a word on the subject to any one, she could not fail to make manifest the extreme longing of her own heart. She could not have written Brooke's name on paper, in reference to his words to herself, without covering it with epithets of love. But all that must be known to no one if her love was to be of no avail to her. And she had an idea that her aunt would not wish Brooke to marry her,--would think that Brooke should do better; and she was quite clear that in such a matter as this her aunt's wishes must be law. Had not her aunt the power of disinheriting Brooke altogether? And what then if her aunt should die,--should die now,--leaving Brooke at liberty to do as he pleased? There was something so distasteful to her in this view of the matter that she would not look at it. She would not allow herself to think of any success which might possibly accrue to herself by reason of her aunt's death. Intense as was the longing in her heart for permission from those in authority over her to give herself to Brooke Burgess, perfect as was the earthly Paradise which appeared to be open to her when she thought of the good thing which had befallen her in that matter, she conceived that she would be guilty of the grossest ingrat.i.tude were she in any degree to curtail even her own estimate of her aunt's prohibitory powers because of her aunt's illness. The remembrance of the words which Brooke had spoken to her was with her quite perfect. She was entirely conscious of the joy which would be hers, if she might accept those words as properly sanctioned; but she was a creature in her aunt's hands,--according to her own ideas of her own duties; and while her aunt was ill she could not even learn what might be the behests which she would be called on to obey.

She was sitting one evening alone, thinking of all this, having left Martha with her aunt, and was trying to reconcile the circ.u.mstances of her life as it now existed with the circ.u.mstances as they had been with her in the old days at Nuncombe Putney, wondering at herself in that she should have a lover, and trying to convince herself that for her this little episode of romance could mean nothing serious, when Martha crept down into the room to her. Of late days,--the alteration might perhaps be dated from the rejection of Mr. Gibson,--Martha, who had always been very kind, had become more respectful in her manner to Dorothy than had heretofore been usual with her. Dorothy was quite aware of it, and was not unconscious of a certain rise in the world which was thereby indicated. "If you please, miss," said Martha, "who do you think is here?"

"But there is n.o.body with my aunt?" said Dorothy.

"She is sleeping like a babby, and I came down just for a moment.

Mr. Gibson is here, miss,--in the house! He asked for your aunt, and when, of course, he could not see her, he asked for you." Dorothy for a few minutes was utterly disconcerted, but at last she consented to see Mr. Gibson. "I think it is best," said Martha, "because it is bad to be fighting, and missus so ill. 'Blessed are the peace-makers,'

miss, 'for they shall be called the children of G.o.d.'" Convinced by this argument, or by the working of her own mind, Dorothy directed that Mr. Gibson might be shewn into the room. When he came, she found herself unable to address him. She remembered the last time in which she had seen him, and was lost in wonder that he should be there. But she shook hands with him, and went through some form of greeting in which no word was uttered.

"I hope you will not think that I have done wrong," said he, "in calling to ask after my old friend's state of health?"

"Oh dear, no," said Dorothy, quite bewildered.