On the next morning she met him at breakfast.
She went down stairs later than usual, not till ten,
having hung about her aunt’s room, thinking
that thus she would escape him for the present.
She would wait till he was gone out, and then she
would go down. She did wait; but she could not
hear the front door, and then her aunt murmured something
about Brooke’s breakfast. She was told to
go down, and she went. But when on the stairs
she slunk back to her own room, and stood there for
awhile, aimless, motionless, not knowing what to do.
Then one of the girls came to her, and told her that
Mr Burgess was waiting breakfast for her. She
knew not what excuse to make, and at last descended
slowly to the parlour. She was very happy, but
had it been possible for her to have run away she
would have gone.
‘Dear Dorothy,’ he said at once.
‘I may call you so, may I not?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘And you will love me and be my own, own wife?’
‘No, Mr Burgess.’
‘No?’
‘I mean that is to say—’
‘Do you love me, Dorothy?’
’Only think how ill Aunt Stanbury is, Mr Burgess;
perhaps dying! How can I have any thought now
except about her? It wouldn’t be right would
it?’
‘You may say that you love me.’
’Mr Burgess, pray, pray don’t speak of
it now. If you do I must go away.’
‘But do you love me?’
‘Pray, pray don’t, Mr Burgess!’
There was nothing more to be got from her during the
whole day than that. He told her in the evening
that as soon as Miss Stanbury was well, he would come
again, that in any case he would come again. She
sat quite still as he said this, with a solemn face
but smiling at heart, laughing at heart, so happy!
When she got up to leave him, and was forced to give
him her hand, he seized her in his arms and kissed
her. ‘That is very, very wrong,’
she said, sobbing, and then ran to her room the happiest
girl in all Exeter. He was to start early on the
following morning, and she knew that she would not
be forced to see him again. Thinking of him was
so much pleasanter than seeing him!
MR OUTHOUSE COMPLAINS THAT IT’S HARD
Life had gone on during the winter at St Diddulph’s
Parsonage in a dull, weary, painful manner. There
had come a letter in November from Trevelyan to his
wife, saying that as he could trust neither her nor
her uncle with the custody of his child, he should
send a person armed with due legal authority, addressed
to Mr Outhouse, for the recovery of the boy, and desiring
that little Louis might be at once surrendered to
the messenger. Then of course there had arisen
great trouble in the house. Both Mrs Trevelyan
and Nora Rowley had learned by this time that, as
regarded the master of the house, they were not welcome
guests at St Diddulph’s. When the threat
was shewn to Mr Outhouse, he did not say a word to
