Brooke made some ordinary answer to this, and bade his uncle adieu. He had allowed himself to entertain a half chivalrous idea that he could produce a reconciliation between Miss Stanbury and his uncle Barty; and since he had been at Exeter he had said a word, first to the one and then to the other, hinting at the subject; but his hints had certainly not been successful. As he walked from the bank into the High Street he could not fail to ask himself whether there were any grounds for the terrible accusations which he had just heard from his uncle’s lips. Something of the same kind, though in form much less violent, had been repeated to him very often by others of the family. Though he had as a boy known Miss Stanbury well, he had been taught to regard her as an ogress. All the Burgesses had regarded Miss Stanbury as an ogress since that unfortunate will had come to light. But she was an ogress from whom something might be gained—and the ogress had still persisted in saying that a Burgess should be her heir. It had therefore come to pass that Brooke had been brought up half to revere her and half to abhor her. “She is a dreadful woman,” said his branch of the family, “who will not scruple at anything evil. But as it seems that you may probably reap the advantage of the evil that she does, it will become you to put up with her iniquity.” As he had become old enough to understand the nature of her position, he had determined to judge for himself;—but his judgment hitherto simply amounted to this—that Miss Stanbury was a very singular old woman, with a kind heart and good instincts, but so capricious withal that no sensible man would risk his happiness on expectations formed on her promises. Guided by this opinion, he had resolved to be attentive to her and, after a certain fashion, submissive; but certainly not to become her slave. She had thrown over her nephew. She was constantly complaining to him of her niece. Now and again she would say a very bitter word to him about himself. When he had left Exeter on his little excursion, no one was so much in favour with her as Mr. Gibson. On his return he found that Mr. Gibson had been altogether discarded, and was spoken of in terms of almost insolent abuse. “If I were ever so humble to her,” he had said to himself, “it would do no good; and there is nothing I hate so much as humility.” He had thus determined to take the goods the gods provided, should it ever come to pass that such godlike provision was laid before him out of Miss Stanbury’s coffers;—but not to alter his mode of life or put himself out of his way in obedience to her behests, as a man might be expected to do who was destined to receive so rich a legacy. Upon this idea he had acted, still believing the old woman to be good, but believing at the same time that she was very capricious. Now he had heard what his Uncle Bartholomew Burgess had had to say upon the matter, and he could not refrain from asking himself whether his uncle’s accusations were true.
In a narrow passage between the High Street and the Close he met Mr. Gibson. There had come to be that sort of intimacy between the two men which grows from closeness of position rather than from any social desire on either side, and it was natural that Burgess should say a word of farewell. On the previous evening Miss Stanbury had relieved her mind by turning Mr. Gibson into ridicule in her description to Brooke of the manner in which the clergyman had carried on his love affair; and she had at the same time declared that Mr. Gibson had been most violently impertinent to herself. He knew, therefore, that Miss Stanbury and Mr. Gibson had become two, and would on this occasion have passed on without a word relative to the old lady had Mr. Gibson allowed him to do so. But Mr. Gibson spoke his mind freely.
“Off tomorrow, are you?” he said. “Goodbye. I hope we may meet again; but not in the same house, Mr. Burgess.”
“There or anywhere I shall be very happy,” said Brooke.
“Not there, certainly. While you were absent Miss Stanbury treated me in such a way that I shall certainly never put my foot in her house again.”
“Dear me! I thought that you and she were such great friends.”
“I knew her very well, of course;—and respected her. She is a good churchwoman, and is charitable in the city; but she has got such a tongue in her head that there is no bearing it when she does what she calls giving you a bit of her mind.”
“She has been indulgent to me, and has not given me much of it.”
“Your time will come, I’ve no doubt,” continued Mr. Gibson. “Everybody has always told me that it would be so. Even her oldest friends knew it. You ask Mrs. MacHugh, or Mrs. French, at Heavitree.”
“Mrs. French!” said Brooke, laughing. “That would hardly be fair evidence.”
“Why not? I don’t know a better judge of character in all Exeter than Mrs. French. And she and Miss Stanbury have been intimate all their lives. Ask your uncle at the bank.”
“My uncle and Miss Stanbury never were friends,” said Brooke.
“Ask Hugh Stanbury what he thinks of her. But don’t suppose I want to say a word against her. I wouldn’t for the world do such a
