‘I don’t suppose you regard yourself as an Arabella French,’ said he.

’How angry Miss French would be if she heard you..  She considers herself to be one of the reigning beauties of Exeter.’

’She has had a very long reign, and dominion of that sort to be successful ought to be short.’

‘That is spiteful, Mr Burgess.’

’I don’t feel spiteful against her, poor woman.  I own I do not love Camilla.  Not that I begrudge Camilla her present prosperity.’

‘Nor I either, Mr Burgess.’

‘She and Mr Gibson will do very well together, I dare say.’

‘I hope they will,’ said Dorothy, ’and I do not see any reason against it.  They have known each other a long time.’

‘A very long time,’ said Brooke.  Then he paused for a minute, thinking how he might best tell her that which he had now resolved should be told on this occasion.  Dorothy finished her tea and got up as though she were about to go to her duty upstairs.  She had been as yet hardly an hour in the room, and the period of her relief was not fairly over.  But there had come something of a personal flavour in their conversation which prompted her, unconsciously, to leave him.  She had, without any special indication of herself, included herself among that company of old maids who are born and live and die without that vital interest in the affairs of life which nothing but family duties, the care of children, or at least of a husband, will give to a woman.  If she had not meant this she had felt it.  He had understood her meaning, or at least her feeling, and had taken upon himself to assure her that she was not one of the company whose privations she had endeavoured to describe.  Her instinct rather than her reason put her at once upon her guard, and she prepared to leave the room.  ‘You are not going yet,’ he said.

’I think I might as well.  Martha has so much to do, and she comes to me again at five in the morning.’

‘Don’t go quite yet,’ he said, pulling out his watch.  ’I know all about the hours, and it wants twenty minutes to the proper time.’

‘There is no proper time, Mr Burgess.’

’Then you can remain a few minutes longer.  The fact is, I’ve got something I want to say to you.’

He was now standing between her and the door, so that she could not get away from him; but at this moment she was absolutely ignorant of his purpose, expecting nothing of love from him more than she would from Sir Peter Mancrudy.  Her face had become flushed when she made her long speech, but there was no blush on it as she answered him now.  ’Of course, I can wait,’ she said, ‘if you have anything to say to me.’

’Well I have.  I should have said it before, only that that other man was here.’  He was blushing now up to the roots of his hair, and felt that he was in a difficulty.  There are men, to whom such moments of their lives are pleasurable, but Brooke Burgess was not one of them.  He would have been glad to have had it done and over so that then he might take pleasure in it.