‘Don’t you be impatient, my dear.’

’I am not the least impatient; but of course I want to tell mamma and Priscilla.  It will be so nice to live here and not go up to London.  Are we to stay here in this very house?’

’Have you not found out yet that Brooke will be likely to have an opinion of his own on such things?’

‘But would you wish us to live here, aunt?’

’I hardly know, dear.  I am a foolish old woman, and cannot say what I would wish.  I cannot bear to be alone.’

‘Of course we will stay with you.’

‘And yet I should be jealous if I were not mistress of my own house.’

‘Of course you will be mistress.’

’I believe, Dolly, that it would be better that I should die.  I have come to feel that I can do more good by going out of the world than by remaining in it.’  Dorothy hardly answered this in words, but sat close by her aunt, holding the old woman’s hand and caressing it, and administering that love of which Miss Stanbury had enjoyed so little during her life and which had become so necessary to her.

The news about the bank arrangements, though kept of course as a great secret, soon became common in Exeter.  It was known to be a good thing for the firm in general that Barty Burgess should be removed from his share of the management.  He was old-fashioned, unpopular, and very stubborn; and he and a certain Mr Julius Cropper, who was the leading man among the Croppers, had not always been comfortable together.  It was at first hinted that old Miss Stanbury had been softened by sudden twinges of conscience, and that she had confessed to some terrible crime in the way of forgery, perjury, or perhaps worse, and had relieved herself at last by making full restitution.  But such a rumour as this did not last long or receive wide credence.  When it was hinted to such old friends as Sir Peter Mancrudy and Mrs MacHugh, they laughed it to scorn, and it did not exist even in the vague form of an undivulged mystery for above three days.  Then it was asserted that old Barty had been found to have no real claim to any share in the bank, and that he was to be turned out at Miss Stanbury’s instance that he was to be turned out, and that Brooke had been acknowledged to be the owner of the Burgess share of her business.  Then came the fact that old Barty had been bought out, and that the future husband of Miss Stanbury’s niece was to be the junior partner.  A general feeling prevailed at last that there had been another great battle between Miss Stanbury and old Barty, and that the old maid had prevailed now, as she had done in former days.  Before the end of July the papers were in the lawyer’s hands, and all the terms had been fixed.  Brooke came down again and again, to Dorothy’s great delight, and displayed considerable firmness in the management of his own interest.  If Fate intended to make him a banker in Exeter instead of a clerk in the Ecclesiastical