I hope I need not tell you that whenever it may suit you to pay a visit to Exeter, your room will be ready for you, and there will be a warm welcome.  Mrs MacHugh always asks after you; and so has Mrs Clifford.  I won’t tell you what Mrs Clifford said about your colour, because it would make you vain.  The Heavitree affair has all been put off; of course you have heard that.  Dear, dear, dear!  You know what I think, so I need not repeat it.

Give my respects to your mamma and Priscilla, and for yourself, accept the affectionate love of

Your loving old aunt,

Jemima Stanbury.

P.S.  If Martha should say anything to you, you may feel sure that she knows my mind.’

Poor old soul.  She felt an almost uncontrollable longing to have her niece back again, and yet she told herself that she was bound not to send a regular invitation, or to suggest an unconditional return.  Dorothy had herself decided to take her departure, and if she chose to remain away so it must be.  She, Miss Stanbury, could not demean herself by renewing her invitation.  She read her letter before she added to it the postscript, and felt that it was too solemn in its tone to suggest to Dorothy that which she wished to suggest.  She had been thinking much of her own past life when she wrote those words about the state of an unmarried woman, and was vacillating between two minds—­whether it were better for a young woman to look forward to the cares and affections, and perhaps hard usage, of a married life; or to devote herself to the easier and safer course of an old maid’s career.  But an old maid is nothing if she be not kind and good.  She acknowledged that, and, acknowledging it, added the postscript to her letter.  What though there was a certain blow to her pride in the writing of it!  She did tell herself that, in thus referring her niece to Martha for an expression of her own mind after that conversation which she and Martha had had in the parlour, she was in truth eating her own words.  But the postscript was written, and though she took the letter up with her to her own room in order that she might alter the words if she repented of them in the night, the letter was sent as it was written, postscript and all.

She spent the next day with very sober thoughts.  When Mrs MacHugh called upon her and told her that there were rumours afloat in Exeter that the marriage between Camilla French and Mr Gibson would certainly be broken off, in spite of all purchases that had been made, she merely remarked that they were two poor, feckless things, who didn’t know their own minds.  ‘Camilla knows her’s plain enough,’ said Mrs MacHugh sharply; but even this did not give Miss Stanbury any spirit.  She waited, and waited patiently, till Martha should return, thinking of the sweet pink colour which used to come and go in Dorothy’s cheeks which she had been wont to observe so frequently, not knowing that she had observed it and loved it.