“We are very much obliged,” said Mrs. Stanbury, who had not understood the point of Martha’s speech.
“My sister is, I’m sure,” said Priscilla, who had understood it.
Dorothy had taken the letter, and had gone aside with it, and was reading it very carefully. It touched her nearly, and there had come tears into both her eyes, as she dwelt upon it. There was something in her aunt’s allusion to the condition of unmarried women which came home to her especially. She knew her aunt’s past history, and now she knew, or hoped that she knew, something of her own future destiny. Her aunt was desolate, whereas upon her the world smiled most benignly. Brooke had just informed her that he intended to make her his wife as speedily as possible—with her aunt’s consent if possible, but if not, then without it. He had ridiculed the idea of his being stopped by Miss Stanbury’s threats, and had said all this in such fashion that even Priscilla herself had only listened and obeyed. He had spoken not a word of his own income, and none of them had dreamed even of asking him a question. He had been as a god in the little cottage, and all of them had been ready to fall down and worship him. Mrs. Stanbury had not known how to treat him with sufficient deference, and, at the same time, with sufficient affection. He had kissed them all round, and Priscilla had felt an elation which was hardly intelligible to herself. Dorothy, who was so much honoured, had come to enjoy a status in her mother’s estimation very different from that which she had previously possessed, and had grown to be quite beautiful in her mother’s eyes.
There was once a family of three ancient maiden ladies, much respected and loved in the town in which they lived. Their manners of life were well known among their friends, and excited no surprise; but a stranger to the locality once asked of the elder why Miss Matilda, the younger, always went first out of the room? “Matilda once had an offer of marriage,” said the dear simple old lady, who had never been so graced, and who felt that such an episode in life was quite sufficient to bestow brevet rank. It was believed by Mrs. Stanbury that Dorothy’s honours would be carried further than those of Miss Matilda, but there was much of the same feeling in the bosom of the mother towards the fortunate daughter, who, in the eyes of a man, had seemed goodly enough to be his wife.
With this swelling happiness round her heart, Dorothy read her aunt’s letter, and was infinitely softened. “I had gotten somehow to love to see your pretty face.” Dorothy had thought little enough of her own beauty, but she liked being told by her aunt that her face had been found to be pretty. “I am very desolate and solitary here,” her aunt said; and then had come those words about the state of maiden women;—and then those other words, about women’s duties, and her aunt’s prayer on her behalf. “Dear Dorothy, be not such an one.” She held the letter to her lips and to her bosom, and could hardly continue its perusal because of her tears. Such prayers from the aged addressed to the young are generally held in light esteem, but this adjuration was valued by the girl to whom it was addressed. She put together the invitation—or rather the permission accorded to her, to make a visit to Exeter—and the intimation in the postscript that Martha knew her mistress’s mind; and then she returned to the sitting-room, in which Martha was still seated with her mother, and took the old servant apart. “Martha,” she said, “is my aunt happy now?”
“Well—miss.”
“She is strong again; is she not?”
“Sir Peter says she is getting well; and Mr. Martin—; but Mr. Martin isn’t much account.”
“She eats and drinks again?”
“Pretty well;—not as it used to be, you know, miss. I tell her she ought to go somewheres—but she don’t like moving nohow. She never did. I tell her if she’d go to Dawlish—just for a week. But she don’t think there’s a bed fit to sleep on, nowhere, except just her own.”
“She would go if Sir Peter told her.”
“She says that these movings are newfangled fashions, and that the air didn’t use to want changing for folk when she was young. I heard her tell Sir Peter herself, that if she couldn’t live at Exeter, she would die there. She won’t go nowheres, Miss Dorothy. She ain’t careful to live.”
“Tell me something, Martha; will you?”
“What is it, Miss Dorothy?”
“Be a dear good woman now, and tell me true. Would she be better if I were with her?”
“She don’t like being alone, miss. I don’t know nobody as does.”
“But now, about Mr. Brooke, you know.”
“Yes, Mr. Brooke! That’s it.”
“Of course, Martha, I love him better than anything in all the world. I can’t tell you how it was, but I think I loved him the very first
