‘Well, miss.’

‘She is strong again; is she not?’

’Sir Peter says she is getting well; and Mr Martin; but Mr Martin isn’t much account.’

‘She eats and drinks again?’

’Pretty well not as it used to be, you know, miss.  I tell her she ought to go somewheres but she don’t like moving nohow.  She never did.  I tell her if she’d go to Dawlish just for a week.  But she don’t think there’s a bed fit to sleep on, nowhere, except just her own.’

‘She would go if Sir Peter told her.’

’She says that these movings are newfangled fashions, and that the air didn’t use to want changing for folk when she was young.  I heard her tell Sir Peter herself, that if she couldn’t live at Exeter, she would die there.  She won’t go nowheres, Miss Dorothy.  She ain’t careful to live.’

‘Tell me something, Martha; will you?’

‘What is it, Miss Dorothy?’

’Be a dear good woman now, and tell me true.  Would she be better if I were with her?’

‘She don’t like being alone, miss.  I don’t know nobody as does.’

‘But now, about Mr Brooke, you know.’

‘Yes; Mr Brooke!  That’s it.’

’Of course, Martha, I love him better than anything in all the world.  I can’t tell you how it was, but I think I loved him the very first moment I saw him.’

‘Dear, dear, dear!’

’I couldn’t help it, Martha but it’s no good talking about it, for of course I shan’t try to help it now.  Only this, that I would do anything in the world for my aunt except that.’

‘But she don’t like it, Miss Dorothy.  That is the truth, you know.’

’It can’t be helped now, Martha; and of course she’ll be told at once.  Shall I go and tell her?  I’d go today if you think she would like it.’

‘And Mr Brooke?’

‘He is to go tomorrow.’

‘And will you leave him here?’

’Why not?  Nobody will hurt him.  I don’t mind a bit about having him with me now.  But I can tell you this.  When he went away from us once, it made me very unhappy.  Would Aunt Stanbury be glad to see me, Martha?’

Martha’s reserve was at last broken down, and she expressed herself in strong language.  There was nothing on earth her mistress wanted so much as to have her favourite niece back again.  Martha acknowledged that there were great difficulties about Brooke Burgess, and she did not see her way clearly through them.  Dorothy declared her purpose of telling her aunt boldly at once.  Martha shook her head, admiring the honesty and courage, but doubting the result.  She understood better than did any one else the peculiarity of mind which made her mistress specially anxious that none of the Stanbury family should enjoy any portion of the Burgess money, beyond that which she herself had saved out of the income.  There had been moments in which Martha had hoped that this prejudice might be overcome in favour of Hugh;