I have shown your letter to my aunt, as I am sure you will think was best. I should have answered it before, only that I thought that she was not quite well enough to talk about it. She says, as I was sure she would, that what you propose is quite out of the question. I am aware that I am bound to obey her; and as I think that you also ought to do so, I shall think no more of what you have said to me and have written. It is quite impossible now, even if it might have been possible under other circ.u.mstances. I shall always remember your great kindness to me. Perhaps I ought to say that I am very grateful for the compliment you have paid me. I shall think of you always;--till I die.

Believe me to be, Your very sincere friend,

DOROTHY STANBURY.

The next day Miss Stanbury again came out of her room, and on the third day she was manifestly becoming stronger. Dorothy had as yet not spoken of her letter, but was prepared to do so as soon as she thought that a fitting opportunity had come. She had a word or two to say for herself; but she must not again subject herself to being told that she was taking her will of her aunt because her aunt was too ill to defend herself. But on the third day Miss Stanbury herself asked the question. "Have you written anything to Brooke?" she asked.

"I have answered his letter, Aunt Stanbury."

"And what have you said to him?"

"I have told him that you disapproved of it, and that nothing more must be said about it."

"Yes;--of course you made me out to be an ogre."

"I don't know what you mean by that, aunt. I am sure that I told him the truth."

"May I see the letter?"

"It has gone."

"But you have kept a copy," said Miss Stanbury.

"Yes; I have got a copy," replied Dorothy; "but I would rather not shew it. I told him just what I tell you."

"Dorothy, it is not at all becoming that you should have a correspondence with any young man of such a nature that you should be ashamed to shew it to your aunt."

"I am not ashamed of anything," said Dorothy st.u.r.dily.

"I don't know what young women in these days have come to," continued Miss Stanbury. "There is no respect, no subjection, no obedience, and too often--no modesty."

"Does that mean me, Aunt Stanbury?" asked Dorothy.

"To tell you the truth, Dorothy, I don't think you ought to have been receiving love-letters from Brooke Burgess when I was lying ill in bed. I didn't expect it of you. I tell you fairly that I didn't expect it of you."

Then Dorothy spoke out her mind. "As you think that, Aunt Stanbury, I had better go away. And if you please I will,--when you are well enough to spare me."

"Pray don't think of me at all," said her aunt.

"And as for love-letters,--Mr. Burgess has written to me once. I don't think that there can be anything immodest in opening a letter when it comes by the post. And as soon as I had it I determined to shew it to you. As for what happened before, when Mr. Burgess spoke to me, which was long, long after all that about Mr. Gibson was over, I told him that it couldn't be so; and I thought there would be no more about it. You were so ill that I could not tell you. Now you know it all."

"I have not seen your letter to him."

"I shall never shew it to anybody. But you have said things, Aunt Stanbury, that are very cruel."

"Of course! Everything I say is wrong."

"You have told me that I was telling untruths, and you have called me--immodest. That is a terrible word."

"You shouldn't deserve it then."

"I never have deserved it, and I won't bear it. No; I won't. If Hugh heard me called that word, I believe he'd tear the house down."

"Hugh, indeed! He's to be brought in between us;--is he?"

"He's my brother, and of course I'm obliged to think of him. And if you please, I'll go home as soon as you are well enough to spare me."

Quickly after this there were very many letters coming and going between the house in the Close and the ladies at Nuncombe Putney, and Hugh Stanbury and Brooke Burgess. The correspondent of Brooke Burgess was of course Miss Stanbury herself. The letters to Hugh and to Nuncombe Putney were written by Dorothy. Of the former we need be told nothing at the present moment; but the upshot of all poor Dolly's letters was, that on the tenth of March she was to return home to Nuncombe Putney, share once more her sister's bed and mother's poverty, and abandon the comforts of the Close. Before this became a definite arrangement Miss Stanbury had given way in a certain small degree. She had acknowledged that Dorothy had intended no harm. But this was not enough for Dorothy, who was conscious of no harm either done or intended. She did not specify her terms, or require specifically that her aunt should make apology for that word immodest, or at least withdraw it; but she resolved that she would go unless it was most absolutely declared to have been applied to her without the slightest reason. She felt, moreover, that her aunt's house ought to be open to Brooke Burgess, and that it could not be open to them both. And so she went;--having resided under her aunt's roof between nine and ten months.

"Good-bye, Aunt Stanbury," said Dorothy, kissing her aunt, with a tear in her eye and a sob in her throat.

"Good-bye, my dear, good-bye." And Miss Stanbury, as she pressed her niece's hand, left in it a bank-note.

"I'm much obliged, aunt; I am indeed; but I'd rather not." And the bank-note was left on the parlour table.

CHAPTER LVIII.

DOROTHY AT HOME.

Dorothy was received at home with so much affection and such expressions of esteem as to afford her much consolation in her misery. Both her mother and her sister approved of her conduct.

Mrs. Stanbury's approval was indeed accompanied by many expressions of regret as to the good things lost. She was fully alive to the fact that life in the Close at Exeter was better for her daughter than life in their little cottage at Nuncombe Putney. The outward appearance which Dorothy bore on her return home was proof of this.

Her clothes, the set of her hair, her very gestures and motions had framed themselves on town ideas. The faded, wildered, washed-out look, the uncertain, purposeless bearing which had come from her secluded life and subjection to her sister had vanished from her.

She had lived among people, and had learned something of their gait and carriage. Money we know will do almost everything, and no doubt money had had much to do with this. It is very pretty to talk of the alluring simplicity of a clean calico gown; but poverty will shew itself to be meagre, dowdy, and draggled in a woman's dress, let the woman be ever so simple, ever so neat, ever so independent, and ever so high-hearted. Mrs. Stanbury was quite alive to all that her younger daughter was losing. Had she not received two offers of marriage while she was at Exeter? There was no possibility that offers of marriage should be made in the cottage at Nuncombe Putney.

A man within the walls of the cottage would have been considered as much out of place as a wild bull. It had been matter of deep regret to Mrs. Stanbury that her daughter should not have found herself able to marry Mr. Gibson. She knew that there was no matter for reproach in this, but it was a misfortune,--a great misfortune. And in the mother's breast there had been a sad, unrepressed feeling of regret that young people should so often lose their chances in the world through over-fancifulness, and ignorance as to their own good. Now when she heard the story of Brooke Burgess, she could not but think that had Dorothy remained at Exeter, enduring patiently such hard words as her aunt might speak, the love affair might have been brought at some future time to a happy conclusion. She did not say all this; but there came on her a silent melancholy, made expressive by constant little shakings of the head and a continued reproachful sadness of demeanour, which was quite as intelligible to Priscilla as would have been any spoken words. But Priscilla's approval of her sister's conduct was clear, outspoken, and satisfactory. She had been quite sure that her sister had been right about Mr. Gibson; and was equally sure that she was now right about Brooke Burgess. Priscilla had in her mind an idea that if B. B., as they called him, was half as good as her sister represented him to be,--for indeed Dorothy endowed him with every virtue consistent with humanity,--he would not be deterred from his pursuit either by Dolly's letter or by Aunt Stanbury's commands. But of this she thought it wise to say nothing.

She paid Dolly the warm and hitherto unaccustomed compliment of equality, a.s.suming to regard her sister's judgment and persistent independence to be equally strong with her own; and, as she knew well, she could not have gone further than this. "I never shall agree with you about Aunt Stanbury," she said. "To me she seems to be so imperious, so exacting, and also so unjust, as to be unbearable."

"But she is affectionate," said Dolly.

"So is the dog that bites you, and, for aught I know, the horse that kicks you. But it is ill living with biting dogs and kicking horses.

But all that matters little as you are still your own mistress. How strange these nine months have been, with you in Exeter, while we have been at the Clock House. And here we are, together again in the old way, just as though nothing had happened." But Dorothy knew well that a great deal had happened, and that her life could never be as it had been heretofore. The very tone in which her sister spoke to her was proof of this. She had an infinitely greater possession in herself than had belonged to her before her residence at Exeter; but that possession was so heavily mortgaged and so burthened as to make her believe that the change was to be regretted.

At the end of the first week there came a letter from Aunt Stanbury to Dorothy. It began by saying that Dolly had left behind her certain small properties which had now been made up in a parcel and sent by the railway, carriage paid. "But they weren't mine at all," said Dolly, alluding to certain books in which she had taken delight. "She means to give them to you," said Priscilla, "and I think you must take them." "And the shawl is no more mine than it is yours, though I wore it two or three times in the winter." Priscilla was of opinion that the shawl must be taken also. Then the letter spoke of the writer's health, and at last fell into such a strain of confidential gossip that Mrs. Stanbury, when she read it, could not understand that there had been a quarrel. "Martha says that she saw Camilla French in the street to-day, such a guy in her new finery as never was seen before except on May-day." Then in the postscript Dorothy was enjoined to answer this letter quickly. "None of your short sc.r.a.ps, my dear," said Aunt Stanbury.

"She must mean you to go back to her," said Mrs. Stanbury.

"No doubt she does," said Priscilla; "but Dolly need not go because my aunt means it. We are not her creatures."

But Dorothy answered her aunt's letter in the spirit in which it had been written. She asked after her aunt's health, thanked her aunt for the gift of the books,--in each of which her name had been clearly written,--protested about the shawl, sent her love to Martha and her kind regards to Jane, and expressed a hope that C. F. enjoyed her new clothes. She described the cottage, and was funny about the cabbage stumps in the garden, and at last succeeded in concocting a long epistle. "I suppose there will be a regular correspondence," said Priscilla.

Two days afterwards, however, the correspondence took altogether another form. The cottage in which they now lived was supposed to be beyond the beat of the wooden-legged postman, and therefore it was necessary that they should call at the post-office for their letters.

On the morning in question Priscilla obtained a thick letter from Exeter for her mother, and knew that it had come from her aunt.

Her aunt could hardly have found it necessary to correspond with Dorothy's mother so soon after that letter to Dorothy had been written had there not arisen some very peculiar cause. Priscilla, after much meditation, thought it better that the letter should be opened in Dorothy's absence, and in Dorothy's absence the following letter was read both by Priscilla and her mother:--