If you will consent to take an old woman’s advice, get rid of the whole boiling of them.  I say it in firm love and friendship, for I am

Your affectionate aunt,

Jemima Stanbury.’

The special vaunted courtesy of this letter consisted, no doubt, in the expression of respect which it contained, and in that declaration of affection with which it terminated.  The epithet was one which Miss Stanbury would by no means use promiscuously in writing to her nearest relatives.  She had not intended to use it when she commenced her letter to Priscilla.  But the respect of which she had spoken had glowed, and had warmed itself into something of temporary love; and feeling at the moment that she was an affectionate aunt, Miss Stanbury had so put herself down in her letter.  Having done such a deed she felt that Dorothy, though Dorothy knew nothing about it, ought in her gratitude to listen patiently to anything that she might now choose to say against Priscilla.

But Dorothy was in truth very miserable, and in her misery wrote a long letter that afternoon to her mother which, however, it will not be necessary to place entire among the Stanbury records begging that she might be informed as to the true circumstances of the case.  She did not say a word of censure in regard either to her mother or sister; but she expressed an opinion in the mildest words which she could use, that if anything had happened which had compromised their names since their residence at the Clock House, she, Dorothy, had better go home and join them.  The meaning of which was that it would not become her to remain in the house in the Close, if the house in the Close would be disgraced by her presence, Poor Dorothy had taught herself to think that the iniquity of roaring lions spread itself very widely.

In the afternoon she made some such proposition to her aunt in ambiguous terms.  ‘Go home!’ said Miss Stanbury.  ‘Now?’

‘If you think it best, Aunt Stanbury’

’And put yourself in the middle of all this iniquity and abomination!  I don’t suppose you want to know the woman?’

‘No, indeed!’

‘Or the man?’

‘Oh, Aunt Stanbury!’

’It’s my belief that no decent gentleman in Exeter would look at you again if you were to go and live among them at Nuncombe Putney while all this is going on.  No, no.  Let one of you be saved out of it, at least.’  Aunt Stanbury had more than once made use of expressions which brought the faintest touch of gentle pink up to her niece’s cheeks.  We must do Dorothy the justice of saying that she had never dreamed of being looked at by any gentleman, whether decent or indecent.  Her life at Nuncombe Putney had been of such a nature, that though she knew that other girls were looked at, and even made love to, and that they got married and had children, no dim vision of such a career for herself had ever presented itself to her eyes.  She had known very well that her mother and sister and herself