m
quite some different part of the world. Then came the bride, hanging
on her brother, then two bridesmaids,--friends of Dorothy's, living
in the town; and, lastly, Priscilla with her mother, for nothing
would induce Priscilla to take the part of a bridesmaid. "You might
as well ask an owl to sing to you," she said. "And then all the
frippery would be thrown away upon me." But she stood close to
Dorothy, and when the ceremony had been performed, was the first,
after Brooke, to kiss her.

Everybody acknowledged that the bride was a winsome bride. Mrs.
MacHugh was at the breakfast, and declared afterwards that Dorothy
Burgess,--as she then was pleased to call her,--was a girl very hard
to be understood. "She came here," said Mrs. MacHugh, "two years ago,
a plain, silent, shy, dowdy young woman, and we all said that Miss
Stanbury would be tired of her in a week. There has never come a time
in which there was any visible difference in her, and now she is one
of our city beauties, with plenty to say to everybody, with a fortune
in one pocket and her aunt in the other, and everybody is saying what
a fortunate fellow Brooke Burgess is to get her. In a year or two
she'll be at the top of everything in the city, and will make her way
in the county too."

The compiler of this history begs to add his opinion to that of
"everybody," as quoted above by Mrs. MacHugh. He thinks that Brooke
Burgess was a very fortunate fellow to get his wife.

CHAPTER XCVIII.

ACQUITTED.

During this time, while Hugh was sitting with his love under the oak
trees at Monkhams, and Dorothy was being converted into Mrs. Brooke
Burgess in Exeter Cathedral, Mrs. Trevelyan was living with her
husband in the cottage at Twickenham. Her life was dreary enough,
and there was but very little of hope in it to make its dreariness
supportable. As often happens in periods of sickness, the single
friend who could now be of service to the one or to the other was
the doctor. He came daily to them, and with that quick growth of
confidence which medical kindness always inspires, Trevelyan told
to this gentleman all the history of his married life,--and all
that Trevelyan told to him he repeated to Trevelyan's wife. It may
therefore be understood that Trevelyan, between them, was treated
like a child.

Dr. Nevill had soon been able to tell Mrs. Trevelyan that her
husband's health had been so shattered as to make it improbable that
he should ever again be s