He Knew He Was Right

intention that things should really change for the worse, and that the fault must be in her, because she had been unable to move as others had moved. She would sit thinking of the circumstances of her own life and tell herself that with her everything had failed. She had loved, but had quarrelled with her lover; and her love had come to nothing⁠—but barren wealth. She had fought for her wealth and had conquered;⁠—and had become hard in the fight, and was conscious of her own hardness. In the early days of her riches and power she had taken her nephew by the hand⁠—and had thrown him away from her because he would not dress himself in her mirror. She had believed herself to be right, and would not, even now, tell herself that she had been wrong; but there were doubts, and qualms of conscience, and an uneasiness⁠—because her life had been a failure. Now she was seeking to appease her self-accusations by sacrificing everything for the happiness of her niece and her chosen hero; but as she went on with the work she felt that all would be in vain, unless she could sweep herself altogether from off the scene. She had told herself that if she could bring Brooke to Exeter, his prospects would be made infinitely brighter than they would be in London, and that she in her last days would not be left utterly alone. But as the prospect of her future life came nearer to her, she saw, or thought that she saw, that there was still failure before her. Young people would not want an old woman in the house with them;⁠—even though the old woman would declare that she would be no more in the house than a tame cat. And she knew herself also too well to believe that she could make herself a tame cat in the home that had so long been subject to her dominion. Would it not be better that she should go away somewhere⁠—and die?

“If Mr. Brooke is to come here,” Martha said to her one day, “we ought to begin and make the changes, ma’am.”

“What changes? You are always wanting to make changes.”

“If they was never made till I wanted them they’d never be made, ma’am. But if there is to be a married couple there should be things proper. Anyways, ma’am, we ought to know;⁠—oughtn’t we?”

The truth of this statement was so evident that Miss Stanbury could not contradict it. But she had not even yet made up her mind. Ideas were running through her head which she knew to be very wild, but of which she could not divest herself. “Martha,” she said, after a while, “I think I shall go away from this myself.”

“Leave the house, ma’am?” said Martha, awestruck.

“There are other houses in the world, I suppose, in which an old woman can live and die.”

“There is houses, ma’am, of course.”

“And what is the difference between one and another?”

“I wouldn’t do it, ma’am, if I was you. I wouldn’t do it if it was ever so. Sure the house is big enough for Mr. Brooke and Miss Dorothy along with you. I wouldn’t go and make such change as that;⁠—I wouldn’t indeed, ma’am.” Martha spoke out almost with eloquence, so much expression was there in her face. Miss Stanbury said nothing more at the moment, beyond signifying her indisposition to make up her mind to anything at the present moment. Yes;⁠—the house was big enough as far as rooms were concerned; but how often had she heard that an old woman must always be in the way, if attempting to live with a newly-married couple? If a mother-in-law be unendurable, how much more so one whose connection would be less near? She could keep her own house no doubt, and let them go elsewhere; but what then would come of her old dream, that Burgess, the new banker in the city, should live in the very house that had been inhabited by the Burgesses, the bankers of old? There was certainly only one way out of all these troubles, and that way would be that she should⁠—go from them and be at rest.

Her will had now been drawn out and completed for the third or fourth time, and she had made no secret of its contents either with Brooke or Dorothy. The whole estate she left to Brooke, including the houses which were to become his after his uncle’s death; and in regard to the property she had made no further stipulation. “I might have settled it on your children,” she said to him, “but in doing so I should have settled it on hers. I don’t know why an old woman should try to interfere with things after she has gone. I hope you won’t squander it, Brooke.”

“I shall be a steady old man by that time,” he said.

“I hope you’ll be steady at any rate. But there it is, and God must direct you in the use of it, if He will. It has been a burden to me; but then I have been a solitary old woman.” Half of what she had saved she proposed to give Dorothy on her marriage, and for doing this arrangements had already been made. There were various other legacies, and the last she announced was one to her nephew, Hugh. “I have left him a thousand pounds,” she said to Dorothy⁠—“so that he may remember me kindly at last.” As to this, however, she exacted a pledge that no intimation of the legacy was to be made to Hugh. Then it was that Dorothy told her aunt that Hugh intended to marry Nora Rowley, one of the ladies who had been at the Clock House during the days in which her mother had lived in grandeur; and then it was also that Dorothy obtained leave to invite Hugh to her own wedding. “I hope she will be happier than her sister,”