‘He is his own master,’ said Miss Stanbury.  ’Of course he is his own master.’

’Will you let me return tomorrow just for a few days and then you can talk to him as you please.  I did not mean to come to stay.  I wished him good-bye because I knew that I should not meet him here.’

’You always talk of going away, Dorothy, as soon as ever you are in the house.  You are always threatening me.’

’I will come again, the moment you tell me.  If he goes in the morning, I will be here the same evening.  And I will write to him, Aunt Stanbury, and tell him that he is quite free, quite free, quite free.’

Miss Stanbury made no reply to this, but sat, still playing with her niece’s hair.  ‘I think I will go to bed,’ she said at last.  ’It is past ten.  You need not go to Nuncombe, Dorothy.  Martha shall meet him, and he can see me here.  But I do not wish him to stay in the house.  You can go over and call on Mrs MacHugh.  Mrs MacHugh will take it well of you that you should call on her.’  Dorothy made no further opposition to this arrangement, but kissed her aunt, and went to her chamber.

How was it all to be for her?  For the last two days she had been radiant with new happiness.  Everything had seemed to be settled.  Her lover, in his high-handed way, had declared that in no important crisis of life would he allow himself to be driven out of his way by the fear of what an old woman might do in her will.  When Dorothy assured him that not for worlds would she, though she loved him dearly, injure his material prospects, he had thrown it all aside, after a grand fashion, that had really made the girl think that all Miss Stanbury’s money was as nothing to his love for her.  She and Priscilla and her mother had been carried away so entirely by Brooke’s oratory as to feel for the time that the difficulties were entirely conquered.  But now the aspect of things was so different!  Whatever Brooke might owe to Miss Stanbury, she, Dorothy, owed her aunt everything.  She would immolate herself if Brooke would only let her.  She did not quite understand her aunt’s stubborn opposition; but she knew that there was some great cause for her aunt’s feeling on the matter.  There had been a promise made, or an oath sworn, that the property of the Burgess family should not go into the hands of any Stanbury.  Dorothy told herself that, were she married, she would be a Stanbury no longer, that her aunt would still comply with the obligation she had fixed for herself; but, nevertheless, she was ready to believe that her aunt might be right.  Her aunt had always declared that it should be so; and Dorothy, knowing this, confessed to herself that she should have kept her heart under better control.  Thinking of these things, she went to the table where paper and ink and pens had all been prepared for her so prettily, and began her letter to Brooke.  ‘Dearest, dearest Brooke.’  But then she thought that this was not a fair keeping