He was shewn up at once into the drawing-room, and there he found Miss Stanbury the elder.

‘Oh, Mr Gibson!’ she said at once.

‘Is anything the matter with dear Dorothy?’

’She is the most obstinate, pig-headed young woman I ever came across since the world began.’

‘You don’t say so!  But what is it, Miss Stanbury?’

’What is it?  Why just this.  Nothing on earth that I can say to her will induce her to come down and speak to you.’

‘Have I offended her?’

’Offended a fiddlestick!  Offence indeed!  An offer from an honest man, with her friends’ approval, and a fortune at her back as though she had been born with a gold spoon in her mouth!  And she tells me that she can’t, and won’t, and wouldn’t, and shouldn’t, as though I were asking her to walk the streets.  I declare I don’t know what has come to the young women or what it is they want.  One would have thought that butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.’

‘But what is the reason, Miss Stanbury?’

’Oh, reason!  You don’t suppose people give reasons in these days.  What reason have they when they dress themselves up with bandboxes on their sconces?  Just simply the old reason “I do not like thee, Dr. Fell; why I cannot tell."’

‘May I not see her myself, Miss Stanbury?’

’I can’t make her come downstairs to you.  I’ve been at her the whole morning, Mr Gibson, ever since daylight pretty nearly.  She came into my room before I was up and told me she’d made up her mind.  I’ve coaxed, and scolded, and threatened, and cried but if she’d been a milestone it couldn’t have been of less use.  I told her she might go back to Nuncombe, and she just went off to pack up.’

‘But she’s not to go?’

’How can I say what such a young woman will do?  I’m never allowed a way of my own for a moment.  There’s Brooke Burgess been scolding me at that rate I didn’t know whether I stood on my head or my heels.  And I don’t know now.’

Then there was a pause, while Mr Gibson was endeavouring to decide what would now be his best course of action.  ’Don’t you think she’ll ever come round, Miss Stanbury?’

’I don’t think she’ll ever come any way that anybody wants her to come, Mr Gibson.’

‘I didn’t think she was at all like that,’ said Mr Gibson, almost in tears.

’No nor anybody else.  I have been seeing it come all the same.  It’s just the Stanbury perversity.  If I’d wanted to keep her by herself, to take care of me, and had set my back up at her if she spoke to a man, and made her understand that she wasn’t to think of getting married, she’d have been making eyes at every man that came into the house.  It’s just what one gets for going out of one’s way.  I did think she’d be so happy, Mr Gibson, living here as your wife.  She and I between us could have managed for you so nicely.’

Mr Gibson was silent for a minute or two, during which he walked up and down the room contemplating, no doubt, the picture of married life which Miss Stanbury had painted for him, a picture which, as it seemed, was not to be realised.  ‘And what had I better do, Miss Stanbury?’ he asked at last.