Both Priscilla and Mrs. Stanbury read it, and for awhile they sat with the two letters among them without much speech about them. Mrs. Stanbury was endeavouring to make herself believe that her sister-in-law’s opposition might be overcome, and that then Dorothy might be married. Priscilla was inquiring of herself whether it would be well that Dorothy should defy her aunt—so much, at any rate, would be well—and marry the man, even to his deprivation of the old woman’s fortune. Priscilla had her doubts about this, being very strong in her ideas of self-denial. That her sister should put up with the bitterest disappointment rather than injure the man she loved was right;—but then it would also be so extremely right to defy Aunt Stanbury to her teeth! But Dorothy, in whose character was mixed with her mother’s softness much of the old Stanbury strength, had no doubt in her mind. It was very sweet to be so loved. What gratitude did she not owe to a man who was so true to her! What was she that she should stand in his way? To lay herself down that she might be crushed in his path was no more than she owed to him. Mrs. Stanbury was the first to speak.
“I suppose he is a very good young man,” she said.
“I am sure he is;—a noble, truehearted man,” said Priscilla.
“And why shouldn’t he marry whom he pleases, as long as she is respectable?” said Mrs. Stanbury.
“In some people’s eyes poverty is more disreputable than vice,” said Priscilla.
“Your aunt has been so fond of Dorothy,” pleaded Mrs. Stanbury.
“Just as she is of her servants,” said Priscilla.
But Dorothy said nothing. Her heart was too full to enable her to defend her aunt; nor at the present moment was she strong enough to make her mother understand that no hope was to be entertained. In the course of the day she walked out with her sister on the road towards Ridleigh, and there, standing among the rocks and ferns, looking down upon the river, with the buzz of the little mill within her ears, she explained the feelings of her heart and her many thoughts with a flow of words stronger, as Priscilla thought, than she had ever used before.
“It is not what he would suffer now, Pris, or what he would feel, but what he would feel ten, twenty years hence, when he would know that his children would have been all provided for, had he not lost his fortune by marrying me.”
“He must be the only judge whether he prefers you to the old woman’s money,” said Priscilla.
“No, dear; not the only judge. And it isn’t that, Pris—not which he likes best now, but which it is best for him that he should have. What could I do for him?”
“You can love him.”
“Yes;—I can do that.” And Dorothy paused a moment, to think how exceedingly well she could do that one thing. “But what is that? As you said the other day, a dog can do that. I am not clever. I can’t play, or talk French, or do things that men like their wives to do. And I have lived here all my life; and what am I, that for me he should lose a great fortune?”
“That is his look out.”
“No, dearest;—it is mine, and I will look out. I shall be able, at any rate, to remember always that I have loved him, and have not injured him. He may be angry with me now,”—and there was a feeling of pride at her heart, as she thought that he would be angry with her, because she did not go to him—“but he will know at last that I have been as good to him as I knew how to be.”
Then Priscilla wound her arms round Dorothy, and kissed her. “My sister,” she said; “my own sister!” They walked on further, discussing the matter in all its bearings, talking of the act of self-denial which Dorothy was called on to perform, as though it were some abstract thing, the performance of which was, or perhaps was not, imperatively demanded by the laws which should govern humanity; but with no idea on the mind of either of them that there was any longer a doubt as to this special matter in hand. They were away from home over three hours; and, when they returned, Dorothy at once wrote her two letters. They were very simple, and very short. She told Brooke, whom she now addressed as “Dear Mr. Burgess,” that it could not be as he would have it; and she told her aunt—with some terse independence of expression, which Miss Stanbury quite understood—that she had considered the matter, and had thought it right to refuse Mr. Burgess’s offer.
“Don’t you think she is very much changed?” said Mrs. Stanbury to her eldest daughter.
“Not changed in the least, mother; but the sun has opened the bud, and now we see the fruit.”
LIX
Mr. Bozzle at Home
It had now come to pass that Trevelyan had not a friend in the world to whom he could apply in the matter of his wife and family. In the last communication which he had received from Lady Milborough she had scolded him, in terms that
