The Close, March 19, 186--.

DEAR SISTER STANBURY,

After much consideration, I think it best to send under cover to you the enclosed letter from Mr. Brooke Burgess, intended for your daughter Dorothy. You will see that I have opened it and read it,--as I was clearly ent.i.tled to do, the letter having been addressed to my niece while she was supposed to be under my care. I do not like to destroy the letter, though, perhaps, that would be best; but I would advise you to do so, if it be possible, without shewing it to Dorothy. I have told Mr. Brooke Burgess what I have done.

I have also told him that I cannot sanction a marriage between him and your daughter. There are many reasons of old date,--not to speak of present reasons also,--which would make such a marriage highly inexpedient. Mr. Brooke Burgess is, of course, his own master, but your daughter understands completely how the matter stands.

Yours truly,

JEMIMA STANBURY.

"What a wicked old woman!" said Priscilla. Then there arose a question whether they should read Brooke's letter, or whether they should give it unread to Dorothy. Priscilla denounced her aunt in the strongest language she could use for having broken the seal.

"'Clearly ent.i.tled,'--because Dorothy had been living with her!"

exclaimed Priscilla. "She can have no proper conception of honour or of honesty. She had no more right to open Dorothy's letter than she had to take her money." Mrs. Stanbury was very anxious to read Brooke's letter, alleging that they would then be able to judge whether it should be handed over to Dorothy. But Priscilla's sense of right would not admit of this. Dorothy must receive the letter from her lover with no further stain from unauthorised eyes than that to which it had been already subjected. She was called in, therefore, from the kitchen, and the whole packet was given to her. "Your aunt has read the enclosure, Dolly; but we have not opened it."

Dorothy took the packet without a word and sat herself down. She first read her aunt's letter very slowly. "I understand perfectly,"

she said, folding it up, almost listlessly, while Brooke's letter lay still unopened on her lap. Then she took it up, and held it awhile in both hands, while her mother and Priscilla watched her. "Priscilla,"

she said, "do you read it first."

Priscilla was immediately at her side, kissing her. "No, my darling; no," she said; "it is for you to read it." Then Dorothy took the precious contents from the envelope, and opened the folds of the paper. When she had read a dozen words, her eyes were so suffused with tears, that she could hardly make herself mistress of the contents of the letter; but she knew that it contained renewed a.s.surances of her lover's love, and a.s.surance on his part that he would take no refusal from her based on any other ground than that of her own indifference to him. He had written to Miss Stanbury to the same effect; but he had not thought it necessary to explain this to Dorothy; nor did Miss Stanbury in her letter tell them that she had received any communication from him. "Shall I read it now?" said Priscilla, as soon as Dorothy again allowed the letter to fall into her lap.

Both Priscilla and Mrs. Stanbury read it, and for awhile they sat with the two letters among them without much speech about them.

Mrs. Stanbury was endeavouring to make herself believe that her sister-in-law's opposition might be overcome, and that then Dorothy might be married. Priscilla was inquiring of herself whether it would be well that Dorothy should defy her aunt,--so much, at any rate, would be well,--and marry the man, even to his deprivation of the old woman's fortune. Priscilla had her doubts about this, being very strong in her ideas of self-denial. That her sister should put up with the bitterest disappointment rather than injure the man she loved was right;--but then it would also be so extremely right to defy Aunt Stanbury to her teeth! But Dorothy, in whose character was mixed with her mother's softness much of the old Stanbury strength, had no doubt in her mind. It was very sweet to be so loved. What grat.i.tude did she not owe to a man who was so true to her! What was she that she should stand in his way? To lay herself down that she might be crushed in his path was no more than she owed to him. Mrs.

Stanbury was the first to speak.

"I suppose he is a very good young man," she said.

"I am sure he is;--a n.o.ble, true-hearted man," said Priscilla.

"And why shouldn't he marry whom he pleases, as long as she is respectable?" said Mrs. Stanbury.

"In some people's eyes poverty is more disreputable than vice," said Priscilla.

"Your aunt has been so fond of Dorothy," pleaded Mrs. Stanbury.

"Just as she is of her servants," said Priscilla.

But Dorothy said nothing. Her heart was too full to enable her to defend her aunt; nor at the present moment was she strong enough to make her mother understand that no hope was to be entertained. In the course of the day she walked out with her sister on the road towards Ridleigh, and there, standing among the rocks and ferns, looking down upon the river, with the buzz of the little mill within her ears, she explained the feelings of her heart and her many thoughts with a flow of words stronger, as Priscilla thought, than she had ever used before.

"It is not what he would suffer now, Pris, or what he would feel, but what he would feel ten, twenty years hence, when he would know that his children would have been all provided for, had he not lost his fortune by marrying me."

"He must be the only judge whether he prefers you to the old woman's money," said Priscilla.

"No, dear; not the only judge. And it isn't that, Pris,--not which he likes best now, but which it is best for him that he should have.

What could I do for him?"

"You can love him."

"Yes;--I can do that." And Dorothy paused a moment, to think how exceedingly well she could do that one thing. "But what is that? As you said the other day, a dog can do that. I am not clever. I can't play, or talk French, or do things that men like their wives to do.

And I have lived here all my life; and what am I, that for me he should lose a great fortune?"

"That is his look out."

"No, dearest;--it is mine, and I will look out. I shall be able, at any rate, to remember always that I have loved him, and have not injured him. He may be angry with me now,"--and there was a feeling of pride at her heart, as she thought that he would be angry with her, because she did not go to him,--"but he will know at last that I have been as good to him as I knew how to be."

Then Priscilla wound her arms round Dorothy, and kissed her.

"My sister," she said; "my own sister!" They walked on further, discussing the matter in all its bearings, talking of the act of self-denial which Dorothy was called on to perform, as though it were some abstract thing, the performance of which was, or perhaps was not, imperatively demanded by the laws which should govern humanity; but with no idea on the mind of either of them that there was any longer a doubt as to this special matter in hand. They were away from home over three hours; and, when they returned, Dorothy at once wrote her two letters. They were very simple, and very short. She told Brooke, whom she now addressed as "Dear Mr. Burgess," that it could not be as he would have it; and she told her aunt,--with some terse independence of expression, which Miss Stanbury quite understood,--that she had considered the matter, and had thought it right to refuse Mr. Burgess's offer.

"Don't you think she is very much changed?" said Mrs. Stanbury to her eldest daughter.

"Not changed in the least, mother; but the sun has opened the bud, and now we see the fruit."

CHAPTER LIX.

MR. BOZZLE AT HOME.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

It had now come to pa.s.s that Trevelyan had not a friend in the world to whom he could apply in the matter of his wife and family. In the last communication which he had received from Lady Milborough she had scolded him, in terms that were for her severe, because he had not returned to his wife and taken her off with him to Naples. Mr.

Bideawhile had found himself obliged to decline to move in the matter at all. With Hugh Stanbury, Trevelyan had had a direct quarrel. Mr.

and Mrs. Outhouse he regarded as bitter enemies, who had taken the part of his wife without any regard to the decencies of life. And now it had come to pa.s.s that his sole remaining ally, Mr. Samuel Bozzle, the ex-policeman, was becoming weary of his service. Trevelyan remained in the north of Italy up to the middle of March, spending a fortune in sending telegrams to Bozzle, instigating Bozzle by all the means in his power to obtain possession of the child, desiring him at one time to pounce down upon the parsonage of St. Diddulph's with a battalion of policemen armed to the teeth with the law's authority, and at another time suggesting to him to find his way by stratagem into Mr. Outhouse's castle and carry off the child in his arms. At last he sent word to say that he himself would be in England before the end of March, and would see that the majesty of the law should be vindicated in his favour.

Bozzle had in truth made but one personal application for the child at St. Diddulph's. In making this he had expected no success, though, from the energetic nature of his disposition, he had made the attempt with some zeal. But he had never applied again at the parsonage, disregarding the letters, the telegrams, and even the promises which had come to him from his employer with such frequency. The truth was that Mrs. Bozzle was opposed to the proposed separation of the mother and the child, and that Bozzle was a man who listened to the words of his wife. Mrs. Bozzle was quite prepared to admit that Madame T.,--as Mrs. Trevelyan had come to be called at No. 55, Stony Walk,--was no better than she should be. Mrs. Bozzle was disposed to think that ladies of quality, among whom Madame T. was ent.i.tled in her estimation to take rank, were seldom better than they ought to be, and she was quite willing that her husband should earn his bread by watching the lady or the lady's lover. She had partic.i.p.ated in Bozzle's triumph when he had discovered that the Colonel had gone to Devonshire, and again when he had learned that the Lothario had been at St. Diddulph's. And had the case been brought before the judge ordinary by means of her husband's exertions, she would have taken pleasure in reading every word of the evidence, even though her husband should have been ever so roughly handled by the lawyers. But now, when a demand was made upon Bozzle to violate the sanct.i.ty of the clergyman's house, and withdraw the child by force or stratagem, she began to perceive that the palmy days of the Trevelyan affair were over for them, and that it would be wise on her husband's part gradually to back out of the gentleman's employment. "Just put it on the fire-back, Bozzle," she said one morning, as her husband stood before her reading for the second time a somewhat lengthy epistle which had reached him from Italy, while he held the baby over his shoulder with his left arm. He had just washed himself at the sink, and though his face was clean, his hair was rough, and his shirt sleeves were tucked up.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Put it on the fire-back, Bozzle."]

"That's all very well, Maryanne; but when a party has took a gent's money, a party is bound to go through with the job."

"Gammon, Bozzle."

"It's all very well to say gammon; but his money has been took,--and there's more to come."

"And ain't you worked for the money,--down to Hexeter one time, across the water pretty well day and night watching that ere clergyman's 'ouse like a cat? What more'd he have? As to the child, I won't hear of it, B. The child shan't come here. We'd all be shewed up in the papers as that black, that they'd hoot us along the streets. It ain't the regular line of business, Bozzle; and there ain't no good to be got, never, by going off the regular line."

Whereupon Bozzle scratched his head and again read the letter. A distinct promise of a hundred pounds was made to him, if he would have the child ready to hand over to Trevelyan on Trevelyan's arrival in England.

"It ain't to be done, you know," said Bozzle.

"Of course it ain't," said Mrs. Bozzle.

"It ain't to be done anyways;--not in my way of business. Why didn't he go to Skint, as I told him, when his own lawyer was too dainty for the job? The paternal parent has a right to his infants, no doubt."