I should have learned to think that to be
a lady of fashion was everything."

"I do not believe a bit of it."

"It is better as it is, Hugh;--for me at least. I had always a sort
of conviction that it would be better, though I had a longing to play
the other part. Then you came, and you have saved me. Nevertheless,
it is very nice, Hugh, to have the oaks to sit under." Stanbury
declared that it was very nice.

[Illustration: Monkhams.]

But still nothing was settled about the wedding. Trevelyan's
condition was so uncertain that it was very difficult to settle
anything. Though nothing was said on the subject between Stanbury
and Mrs. Trevelyan, and nothing written between Nora and her sister,
it could not but be remembered that should Trevelyan die, his widow
would require a home with them. They were deterred from choosing a
house by this reflection, and were deterred from naming a day also by
the consideration that were they to do so, Trevelyan's state might
still probably prevent it. But this was arranged, that if Trevelyan
lived through the winter, or even if he should not live, their
marriage should not be postponed beyond the end of March. Till
that time Lord Peterborough would remain at Monkhams, and it was
understood that Nora's invitation extended to that period.

"If my wife does not get tired of you, I shall not," Lord
Peterborough said to Nora. "The thing is that when you do go we shall
miss you so terribly." In September, too, there happened another
event which took Stanbury to Exeter, and all needful particulars as
to that event shall be narrated in the next chapter.

CHAPTER XCVII.

MRS. BROOKE BURGESS.

It may be doubted whether there was a happier young woman in England
than Dorothy Stanbury when that September came which was to make
her the wife of Mr. Brooke Burgess, the new partner in the firm of
Cropper and Burgess. Her early aspirations in life had been so low,
and of late there had come upon her such a succession of soft showers
of success,--mingled now and then with slight threatenings of storms
which had passed away,--that the Close at Exeter seemed to her to
have become a very Paradise. Her aunt's temper had sometimes been to
her as the threat of a storm, and there had been the Gibson marriage
treaty, and the short-lived opposition to the other marriage treaty
which had seemed to her to be so very preferable; but everything had
gone at last as though she had been Fortune