n to-morrow,--just for a few days,--and then
you can talk to him as you please. I did not mean to come to stay. I
wished him good-bye because I knew that I should not meet him here."

"You always talk of going away, Dorothy, as soon as ever you are in
the house. You are always threatening me."

"I will come again, the moment you tell me. If he goes in the
morning, I will be here the same evening. And I will write to him,
Aunt Stanbury, and tell him,--that he is--quite free,--quite
free,--quite free."

Miss Stanbury made no reply to this, but sat, still playing with her
niece's hair. "I think I will go to bed," she said at last. "It is
past ten. You need not go to Nuncombe, Dorothy. Martha shall meet
him, and he can see me here. But I do not wish him to stay in the
house. You can go over and call on Mrs. MacHugh. Mrs. MacHugh will
take it well of you that you should call on her." Dorothy made no
further opposition to this arrangement, but kissed her aunt, and went
to her chamber.

How was it all to be for her? For the last two days she had been
radiant with new happiness. Everything had seemed to be settled. Her
lover, in his high-handed way, had declared that in no important
crisis of life would he allow himself to be driven out of his way
by the fear of what an old woman might do in her will. When Dorothy
assured him that not for worlds would she, though she loved him
dearly, injure his material prospects, he had thrown it all aside,
after a grand fashion, that had really made the girl think that
all Miss Stanbury's money was as nothing to his love for her. She
and Priscilla and her mother had been carried away so entirely by
Brooke's oratory as to feel for the time that the difficulties were
entirely conquered. But now the aspect of things was so different!
Whatever Brooke might owe to Miss Stanbury, she, Dorothy, owed her
aunt everything. She would immolate herself,--if Brooke would only
let her. She did not quite understand her aunt's stubborn opposition;
but she knew that there was some great cause for her aunt's feeling
on the matter. There had been a promise made, or an oath sworn, that
the property of the Burgess family should not go into the hands of
any Stanbury. Dorothy told herself that, were she married, she would
be a Stanbury no longer;--that her aunt would still comply with the
obligation she had fixed for herself; but, nevertheless, she was
ready to believe that her aunt might be right. Her aunt ha