‘And what has become of Hugh?’ said Brooke.

‘We never talk of him,’ said Miss Stanbury gravely.

‘I hope there’s nothing wrong?  I hear of him very often in London.’

‘My aunt and he don’t agree that’s all,’ said Dorothy.

’He has given up his profession as a barrister in which he might have lived like a gentleman,’ said Miss Stanbury, ’and has taken to writing for a penny newspaper.’

‘Everybody does that now, Miss Stanbury.’

‘I hope you don’t, Mr Burgess.’

’I!  Nobody would print anything that I wrote.  I don’t write for anything, certainly.’

‘I’m very glad to hear it,’ said Miss Stanbury.

Brooke Burgess, or Mr Brooke, as he came to be called very shortly by the servants in the house, was a good-looking man, with black whiskers and black hair, which, as he said, was beginning to be thin on the top of his head, and pleasant small bright eyes.  Dorothy thought that next to her brother Hugh he was the most good-natured looking man she had ever seen.  He was rather below the middle height, and somewhat inclined to be stout.  But he would boast that he could still walk his twelve miles in three hours, and would add that as long as he could do that he would never recognise the necessity of putting himself on short commons.  He had a well-cut nose, not quite aquiline, but tending that way, a chin with a dimple on it, and as sweet a mouth as ever declared the excellence of a man’s temper.  Dorothy immediately began to compare him with her brother Hugh, who was to her, of all men, the most godlike.  It never occurred to her to make any comparison between Mr Gibson and Mr Burgess.  Her brother Hugh was the most godlike of men; but there was something godlike also about the new corner.  Mr Gibson, to Dorothy’s eyes, was by no means divine;

‘I used to call you Aunt Stanbury,’ said Brooke Burgess to the old lady; ‘am I to go on doing it now?’

‘You may call me what you like,’ said Miss Stanbury.  ’Only dear me I never did see anybody so much altered.’  Before she went up to dress herself for dinner, Miss Stanbury was quite restored to her good humour, as Dorothy could perceive.

The dinner passed off well enough.  Mr Gibson, at the head of the table, did, indeed, look very much out of his element, as though he conceived that his position revealed to the outer world those ideas of his in regard to Dorothy, which ought to have been secret for a while longer.  There are few men who do not feel ashamed of being paraded before the world as acknowledged suitors, whereas ladies accept the position with something almost of triumph.  The lady perhaps regards herself as the successful angler, whereas the gentleman is conscious of some similitude to the unsuccessful fish.  Mr Gibson, though he was not yet gasping in the basket, had some presentiment of this feeling, which made his present seat of honour unpleasant to him.  Brooke Burgess,