“That’s not her idea. She conceives herself bound to leave all she has back to a Burgess, except anything she may save—as she says, off her own back, or out of her own belly. She has told me so a score of times.”
“And what did you say?”
“I always told her that, let her do as she would, I should never ask any question about her will.”
“But she hates us all like poison—except me,” said Brooke. “I never knew people so absurdly hostile as are your aunt and my uncle Barty. Each thinks the other the most wicked person in the world.”
“I suppose your uncle was hard upon her once.”
“Very likely. He is a hard man—and has, very warmly, all the feelings of an injured man. I suppose my uncle Brooke’s will was a cruel blow to him. He professes to believe that Miss Stanbury will never leave me a shilling.”
“He is wrong, then,” said Stanbury.
“Oh yes;—he’s wrong, because he thinks that that’s her present intention. I don’t know that he’s wrong as to the probable result.”
“Who will have it, then?”
“There are ever so many horses in the race,” said Brooke. “I’m one.”
“You’re the favourite,” said Stanbury.
“For the moment I am. Then there’s yourself.”
“I’ve been scratched, and am altogether out of the betting.”
“And your sister,” continued Brooke.
“She’s only entered to run for the second money; and, if she’ll trot over the course quietly, and not go the wrong side of the posts, she’ll win that.”
“She may do more than that. Then there’s Martha.”
“My aunt will never leave her money to a servant. What she may give to Martha would come from her own savings.”
“The next is a dark horse, but one that wins a good many races of this kind. He’s apt to come in with a fatal rush at the end.”
“Who is it?”
“The hospitals. When an old lady finds in her latter days that she hates everybody, and fancies that the people around her are all thinking of her money, she’s uncommon likely to indulge herself in a little bit of revenge, and solace herself with large-handed charity.”
“But she’s so good a woman at heart,” said Hugh.
“And what can a good woman do better than promote hospitals?”
“She’ll never do that. She’s too strong. It’s a maudlin sort of thing, after all, for a person to leave everything to a hospital.”
“But people are maudlin when they’re dying,” said Brooke—“or even when they think they’re dying. How else did the Church get the estates, of which we are now distributing so bountifully some of the last remnants down at our office? Come into the next room, and we’ll have a smoke.”
They had their smoke, and then they went at half-price to the play; and, after the play was over, they eat three or four dozen of oysters between them. Brooke Burgess was a little too old for oysters at midnight in September; but he went through his work like a man. Hugh Stanbury’s powers were so great, that he could have got up and done the same thing again, after he had been an hour in bed, without any serious inconvenience.
But, in truth, Brooke Burgess had still another word or two to say before he went to his rest. They supped somewhere near the Haymarket, and then he offered to walk home with Stanbury, to his chambers in Lincoln’s Inn. “Do you know that Mr. Gibson at Exeter?” he asked, as they passed through Leicester Square.
“Yes; I knew him. He was a sort of tame-cat parson at my aunt’s house, in my days.”
“Exactly;—but I fancy that has come to an end now. Have you heard anything about him lately?”
“Well;—yes I have,” said Stanbury, feeling that dislike to speak of his sister which is common to most brothers when in company with other men.
“I suppose you’ve heard of it, and, as I was in the middle of it all, of course I couldn’t but know all about it too. Your aunt wanted him to marry your sister.”
“So I was told.”
“But your sister didn’t see it,” said Brooke.
“So I understand,” said Stanbury. “I believe my aunt was exceedingly liberal, and meant to do the best she could for poor Dorothy; but, if she didn’t like him, I suppose she was right not to have him,” said Hugh.
“Of course she was right,” said Brooke, with a good deal of enthusiasm.
“I believe Gibson to be a very decent sort of fellow,” said Stanbury.
“A mean, paltry dog,” said Brooke. There had been a little whisky-toddy after the oysters, and Mr. Burgess was perhaps moved to a warmer expression of feeling than he might have displayed had he discussed this branch of the subject before supper. “I knew from the first that she would have nothing to say to him. He is such a poor creature!”
“I always thought well of him,” said Stanbury, “and was inclined to think that Dolly might have done worse.”
“It is hard to say what is the worst a girl might do; but I think she might do, perhaps, a little better.”
“What do you mean?” said Hugh.
“I think I shall go down, and ask her to take myself.”
“Do you mean it in earnest?”
“I do,” said Brooke. “Of course, I hadn’t a chance when I was there. She told me—”
“Who told you;—Dorothy?”
“No, your aunt;—she told me that Mr. Gibson was to marry your sister. You know your aunt’s way. She spoke of it as though the thing were settled as soon as she had got it into her own head; and she was as hot upon it as though Mr. Gibson had been an archbishop. I had nothing to do then but to wait and see.”
“I had no idea of Dolly being fought for by rivals.”
“Brothers never think much of their sisters,” said Brooke Burgess.
“I can assure you I think a great deal of Dorothy,” said Hugh. “I believe her to be as sweet a woman as God ever made. She hardly knows that she has a
