with eloquence, so
much expression was there in her face. Miss Stanbury said nothing
more at the moment, beyond signifying her indisposition to make up
her mind to anything at the present moment. Yes;--the house was big
enough as far as rooms were concerned; but how often had she heard
that an old woman must always be in the way, if attempting to live
with a newly-married couple? If a mother-in-law be unendurable, how
much more so one whose connection would be less near? She could keep
her own house no doubt, and let them go elsewhere; but what then
would come of her old dream, that Burgess, the new banker in the
city, should live in the very house that had been inhabited by the
Burgesses, the bankers of old? There was certainly only one way out
of all these troubles, and that way would be that she should--go from
them and be at rest.

Her will had now been drawn out and completed for the third or fourth
time, and she had made no secret of its contents either with Brooke
or Dorothy. The whole estate she left to Brooke, including the houses
which were to become his after his uncle's death; and in regard to
the property she had made no further stipulation. "I might have
settled it on your children," she said to him, "but in doing so I
should have settled it on hers. I don't know why an old woman should
try to interfere with things after she has gone. I hope you won't
squander it, Brooke."

"I shall be a steady old man by that time," he said.

"I hope you'll be steady at any rate. But there it is, and God must
direct you in the use of it, if He will. It has been a burthen to
me; but then I have been a solitary old woman." Half of what she had
saved she proposed to give Dorothy on her marriage, and for doing
this arrangements had already been made. There were various other
legacies, and the last she announced was one to her nephew, Hugh. "I
have left him a thousand pounds," she said to Dorothy,--"so that he
may remember me kindly at last." As to this, however, she exacted a
pledge that no intimation of the legacy was to be made to Hugh. Then
it was that Dorothy told her aunt that Hugh intended to marry Nora
Rowley, one of the ladies who had been at the Clock House during the
days in which her mother had lived in grandeur; and then it was also
that Dorothy obtained leave to invite Hugh to her own wedding. "I
hope she will be happier than her sister," Miss Stanbury said, when
she heard of the intended marriage.

"It was