It will be remembered that hitherto no word of affection had been whispered by Mr Gibson into Dorothy’s ears.  When he came before to press his suit she had been made aware of his coming, and had fled, leaving her answer with her aunt.  Mr Gibson had then expressed himself as somewhat injured in that no opportunity of pouring forth his own eloquence had been permitted to him.  On that occasion Miss Stanbury, being in a snubbing humour, had snubbed him.  She had in truth scolded him almost as much as she had scolded Dorothy, telling him that he went about the business in hand as though butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.  ‘You’re stiff as a chair-back,’ she had said to him, with a few other compliments, and these amenities had for a while made him regard the establishment at Heavitree as being, at any rate, pleasanter than that in the Close.  But since that, cool reflection had come.  The proposal was not that he should marry Miss Stanbury, senior, who certainly could be severe on occasions, but Miss Stanbury, junior, whose temper was as sweet as primroses in March.  That which he would have to take from Miss Stanbury, senior, was a certain sum of money, as to which her promise was as good as any bond in the world.  Things had come to such a pass with him in Exeter—­from the hints of his friend the Prebend, from a word or two which had come to him from the Dean, from certain family arrangements proposed to him by his mother and sisters—­things had come to such a pass that he was of a mind that he had better marry some one.  He had, as it were, three strings to his bow.  There were the two French strings, and there was Dorothy.  He had not breadth of genius enough to suggest to himself that yet another woman might be found.  There was a difficulty on the French score even about Miss Stanbury; but it was clear to him that, failing her, he was due to one of the two Miss Frenches.  Now it was not only that the Miss Frenches were empty-handed, but he was beginning to think himself that they were not as nice as they might have been in reference to the arrangement of their head-gear.  Therefore, having given much thought to the matter, and remembering that he had never yet had play for his own eloquence with Dorothy, he had come to Miss Stanbury asking that he might have another chance.  It had been borne in upon him that he had perhaps hitherto regarded Dorothy as too certainly his own, since she had been offered to him by her aunt as being a prize that required no eloquence in the winning; and he thought that if he could have an opportunity of amending that fault, it might even yet be well with his suit.  So he prepared himself, and asked permission, and now found himself alone with the young lady.