“Oh dear, no,” said Dorothy, quite bewildered.
“I have known her for so very long, Miss Dorothy, that now in the hour of her distress, and perhaps mortal malady, I cannot stop to remember the few harsh words that she spoke to me lately.”
“She never means to be harsh, Mr. Gibson.”
“Ah; well; no—perhaps not. At any rate, I have learned to forgive and forget. I am afraid your aunt is very ill, Miss Dorothy.”
“She is ill, certainly, Mr. Gibson.”
“Dear, dear! We are all as the grass of the field, Miss Dorothy—here today and gone tomorrow, as sparks fly upwards. Just fit to be cut down and cast into the oven. Mr. Jennings has been with her, I believe?” Mr. Jennings was the other minor canon.
“He comes three times a week, Mr. Gibson.”
“He is an excellent young man—a very good young man. It has been a great comfort to me to have Jennings with me. But he’s very young, Miss Dorothy; isn’t he?” Dorothy muttered something, purporting to declare that she was not acquainted with the exact circumstances of Mr. Jennings’ age. “I should be so glad to come if my old friend would allow me,” said Mr. Gibson, almost with a sigh. Dorothy was clearly of opinion that any change at the present would be bad for her aunt, but she did not know how to express her opinion; so she stood silent and looked at him. “There needn’t be a word spoken, you know, about the ladies at Heavitree,” said Mr. Gibson.
“Oh dear, no,” said Dorothy. And yet she knew well that there would be such words spoken if Mr. Gibson were to make his way into her aunt’s room. Her aunt was constantly alluding to the ladies at Heavitree, in spite of all the efforts of her old servant to restrain her.
“There was some little misunderstanding,” said Mr. Gibson; “but all that should be over now. We both intended for the best, Miss Dorothy; and I’m sure nobody here can say that I wasn’t sincere.” But Dorothy, though she could not bring herself to answer Mr. Gibson plainly, could not be induced to assent to his proposition. She muttered something about her aunt’s weakness, and the great attention which Mr. Jennings showed. Her aunt had become very fond of Mr. Jennings, and she did at last express her opinion, with some clearness, that her aunt should not be disturbed by any changes at present. “After that I should not think of pressing it, Miss Dorothy,” said Mr. Gibson; “but, still, I do hope that I may have the privilege of seeing her yet once again in the flesh. And touching my approaching marriage, Miss Dorothy—” He paused, and Dorothy felt that she was blushing up to the roots of her hair. “Touching my marriage,” continued Mr. Gibson, “which however will not be solemnized till the end of March;”—it was manifest that he regarded this as a point that would in that household be regarded as an argument in his favour—“I do hope that you will look upon it in the most favourable light—and your excellent aunt also, if she be spared to us.”
“I am sure we hope that you will be happy, Mr. Gibson.”
“What was I to do, Miss Dorothy? I know that I have been very much blamed;—but so unfairly! I have never meant to be untrue to a mouse, Miss Dorothy.” Dorothy did not at all understand whether she were the mouse, or Camilla French, or Arabella. “And it is so hard to find that one is ill-spoken of because things have gone a little amiss.” It was quite impossible that Dorothy should make any answer to this, and at last Mr. Gibson left her, assuring her with his last word that nothing would give him so much pleasure as to be called upon once more to see his old friend in her last moments.
Though Miss Stanbury had been described as sleeping “like a babby,” she had heard the footsteps of a strange man in the house, and had made Martha tell her whose footsteps they were. As soon as Dorothy went to her, she darted upon the subject with all her old keenness. “What did he want here, Dolly?”
“He said he would like to see you, aunt—when you are a little better, you know. He spoke a good deal of his old friendship and respect.”
“He should have thought of that before. How am I to see people now?”
“But when you are better, aunt—?”
“How do I know that I shall ever be better? He isn’t off with those people at Heavitree—is he?”
“I hope not, aunt.”
“Psha! A poor, weak, insufficient creature;—that’s what he is. Mr. Jennings is worth twenty of him.” Dorothy, though she put the question again in its most alluring form of Christian charity and forgiveness, could not induce her aunt to say that she would see Mr. Gibson. “How can I see him, when you know that Sir Peter has forbidden me to see anybody except Mrs. Clifford and Mr. Jennings?”
Two days afterwards there was an uncomfortable little scene at Heavitree. It must, no doubt, have been the case, that the same train of circumstances which had produced Mr. Gibson’s visit to the Close, produced also the scene in question. It was suggested by some who were attending closely to the matter that Mr. Gibson had already come to repent his engagement with Camilla French; and, indeed, there were those who pretended to believe that he was induced, by the prospect of Miss Stanbury’s demise, to transfer his allegiance yet again, and to bestow his hand upon Dorothy at last. There were many in the city who could never be persuaded that Dorothy had refused him—these being, for the most part, ladies in whose estimation the value of a husband was counted so great, and a beneficed clergyman so valuable among suitors, that it was to their thinking impossible that Dorothy Stanbury should in
