could not but think that had Dorothy remained at Exeter, enduring patiently such hard words as her aunt might speak, the love affair might have been brought at some future time to a happy conclusion.  She did not say all this; but there came on her a silent melancholy, made expressive by constant little shakings of the head and a continued reproachful sadness of demeanour, which was quite as intelligible to Priscilla as would have been any spoken words.  But Priscilla’s approval of her sister’s conduct was clear, outspoken, and satisfactory.  She had been quite sure that her sister had been right about Mr Gibson; and was equally sure that she was now right about Brooke Burgess.  Priscilla had in her mind an idea that if B. B., as they called him, was half as good as her sister represented him to be—­for indeed Dorothy endowed him with every virtue consistent with humanity—­he would not be deterred from his pursuit either by Dolly’s letter or by Aunt Stanbury’s commands.  But of this she thought it wise to say nothing.  She paid Dolly the warm and hitherto unaccustomed compliment of equality, assuming to regard her sister’s judgment and persistent independence to be equally strong with her own; and, as she knew well, she could not have gone further than this.  ‘I never shall agree with you about Aunt Stanbury,’ she said.  ’To me she seems to be so imperious, so exacting, and also so unjust, as to be unbearable.’

‘But she is affectionate,’ said Dolly.

’So is the dog that bites you, and, for aught I know, the horse that kicks you.  But it is ill living with biting dogs and kicking horses.  But all that matters little as you are still your own mistress.  How strange these nine months have been, with you in Exeter, while we have been at the Clock House.  And here we are, together again in the old way, just as though nothing had happened.’  But Dorothy knew well that a great deal had happened, and that her life could never be as it had been heretofore.  The very tone in which her sister spoke to her was proof of this.  She had an infinitely greater possession in herself than had belonged to her before her residence at Exeter; but that possession was so heavily mortgaged and so burthened as to make her believe that the change was to be regretted.

At the end of the first week there came a letter from Aunt Stanbury to Dorothy.  It began by saying that Dolly had left behind her certain small properties which had now been made up in a parcel and sent by the railway, carriage paid.  ‘But they weren’t mine at all,’ said Dolly, alluding to certain books in which she had taken delight.’  She means to give them to you,’ said Priscilla, ‘and I think you must take them.’  ’And the shawl is no more mine than it is yours, though I wore it two or three times in the winter.’  Priscilla was of opinion that the shawl must be taken also.  Then the letter spoke of the writer’s health, and at last fell into such a strain of confidential gossip that Mrs Stanbury, when she read it, could not understand that there had been a quarrel.  ’Martha says that she saw Camilla French in the street to-day, such a guy in her new finery as never was seen before except on May-day.’  Then in the postscript Dorothy was enjoined to answer this letter quickly.  ‘None of your short scraps, my dear,’ said Aunt Stanbury.