‘Dear me!  I thought that you and she were such great friends.’

’I knew her very well, of course and respected her.  She is a good churchwoman, and is charitable in the city; but she has got such a tongue in her head that there is no bearing it when she does what she calls giving you a bit of her mind.’

‘She has been indulgent to me, and has not given me much of it.’

‘Your time will come, I’ve no doubt,’ continued Mr Gibson.  ’Everybody has always told me that it would be so.  Even her oldest friends knew it.  You ask Mrs MacHugh, or Mrs French, at Heavitree.’

‘Mrs French!’ said Brooke, laughing.  ’That would hardly be fair evidence.’

’Why not?  I don’t know a better judge of character in all Exeter than Mrs French.  And she and Miss Stanbury have been intimate all their lives.  Ask your uncle at the bank.’

‘My uncle and Miss Stanbury never were friends,’ said Brooke.

’Ask Hugh Stanbury what he thinks of her.  But don’t suppose I want to say a word against her.  I wouldn’t for the world do such a thing.  Only, as we’ve met there and all that, I thought it best to let you know that she had treated me in such a way, and has been altogether so violent, that I never will go there again.’  So saying, Mr Gibson passed on, and was of opinion that he had spoken with great generosity of the old woman who had treated him so badly.

In the afternoon Brooke Burgess went over to the further end of the Close, and called on Mrs MacHugh; and from thence he walked across to Heavitree, and called on the Frenches.  It may be doubted whether he would have been so well behaved to these ladies had they not been appealed to by Mr Gibson as witnesses to the character of Miss Stanbury.  He got very little from Mrs MacHugh.  That lady was kind and cordial, and expressed many wishes that she might see him again in Exeter.  When he said a few words about Mr Gibson, Mrs MacHugh only laughed, and declared that the gentleman would soon find a plaister for that sore.  ‘There are more fishes than one in the sea,’ she said.

‘But I’m afraid they’ve quarrelled, Mrs MacHugh.’

’So they tell me.  What should we have to talk about here if somebody didn’t quarrel sometimes?  She and I ought to get up a quarrel for the good of the public, only they know that I never can quarrel with anybody.  I never see anybody interesting enough to quarrel with.’  But Mrs MacHugh said nothing about Miss Stanbury, except that she sent over a message with reference to a rubber of whist for the next night but one.

He found the two French girls sitting with their mother, and they all expressed their great gratitude to him for coming to say good-bye before he went.  ‘It is so very nice of you, Mr Burgess,’ said Camilla, ‘and particularly just at present.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Arabella, ’because you know things have been so unpleasant.’

‘My dears, never mind about that,’ said Mrs French.  ’Miss Stanbury has meant everything for the best, and it is all over now.’