’Shew me the letter.  I will see the letter.  I know that there is something the matter.  Do you mean to say you won’t shew me Brooke’s letter?’

There was a moment’s pause before Dorothy answered.  ’I will shew you his letter though I am sure he didn’t mean that I should shew it to anyone.’

‘He hasn’t written evil of me?’

’No; no; no.  He would sooner cut his hand off than say a word bad of you.  He never says or writes anything bad of anybody.  But Oh, aunt; I’ll tell you everything.  I should have told you before, only that you were ill.’

Then Miss Stanbury was frightened.  ‘What is it?’ she said hoarsely, clasping the arms of the great chair, each with a thin, shrivelled hand.

‘Aunt Stanbury, Brooke—­Brooke wants me to be his wife!’

‘What!’

’You cannot be more surprised than I have been, Aunt Stanbury; and there has been no fault of mine.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ said the old woman.

‘Now you may read the letter,’ said Dorothy, standing up.  She was quite prepared to be obedient, but she felt that her aunt’s manner of receiving the information was almost an insult.

‘He must be a fool,’ said Miss Stanbury.

This was hard to hear, and the colour went and came rapidly across Dorothy’s cheeks as she gave herself a few moments to prepare an answer.  She already perceived that her aunt would be altogether adverse to the marriage, and that therefore the marriage could never take place.  She had never for a moment allowed herself to think otherwise, but, nevertheless, the blow was heavy on her.  We all know how constantly hope and expectation will rise high within our own bosoms in opposition to our own judgment, how we become sanguine in regard to events which we almost know can never come to pass.  So it had been with Dorothy.  Her heart had been almost in a flutter of happiness since she had had Brooke’s letter in her possession, and yet she never ceased to declare to herself her own conviction that that letter could lead to no good result.  In regard to her own wishes on the subject she had never asked herself a single question.  As it had been quite beyond her power to bring herself to endure the idea of marrying Mr Gibson, so it had been quite impossible to her not to long to be Brooke’s wife from the moment in which a suggestion to that effect had fallen from his lips.  This was a state of things so certain, so much a matter of course, that, though she had not spoken a word to him in which she owned her love, she had never for a moment doubted that he knew the truth and that everybody else concerned would know it too.  But she did not suppose that her wishes would go for anything with her aunt.  Brooke Burgess was to become a rich man as her aunt’s heir, and her aunt would of course have her own ideas about Brooke’s advancement in life.  She was quite prepared to submit without quarrelling when her aunt should tell her that the idea must not be entertained.  But the order might be given, the prohibition might be pronounced, without an insult to her own feelings as a woman.  ‘He must he a fool,’ Miss Stanbury had said, and Dorothy took time to collect her thoughts before she would reply.  In the meantime her aunt finished the reading of the letter.