She was quite happy when she was told that the marriage could not take place till August, but that Brooke must come again in July.  Brooke did come in the first week of July, and somewhat horrified Dorothy by declaring to her that Miss Stanbury was unreasonable.

‘If I insist upon leaving London so often for a day or two,’ said he, ‘how am I to get anything like leave of absence when the time comes?’ In answer to this Dorothy tried to make him understand that business should not be neglected, and that, as far as she was concerned, she could do very well without that trip abroad which he had proposed for her.  ‘I’m not going to be done in that way,’ said Brooke.  ’And now that I am here she has nothing to say to me.  I’ve told her a dozen times that I don’t want to know anything about her will, and that I’ll take it all for granted.  There is something to be settled on you, that she calls her own.’

‘She is so generous, Brooke.’

’She is generous enough, but she is very whimsical.  She is going to make her whole will over again, and now she wants to send some message to Uncle Barty.  I don’t know what it is yet, but I am to take it.  As far as I can understand, she has sent all the way to London for me, in order that I may take a message across the Close.’

‘You talk as though it were very disagreeable, coming to Exeter,’ said Dorothy, with a little pout.

‘So it is very disagreeable.’

‘Oh, Brooke!’

’Very disagreeable if our marriage is to be put off by it.  I think it will be so much nicer making love somewhere on the Rhine than having snatches of it here, and talking all the time about wills and tenements and settlements.’  As he said this, with his arm round her waist and his face quite close to hers, shewing thereby that he was not altogether averse even to his present privileges, she forgave him.

On that same afternoon, just before the banking hours were over, Brooke went across to the house of Cropper and Burgess, having first been closeted for nearly an hour with his aunt and, as he went, his step was sedate and his air was serious.  He found his uncle Barty, and was not very long in delivering his message.  It was to this effect, that Miss Stanbury particularly wished to see Mr Bartholomew Burgess on business, at some hour on that afternoon or that evening.  Brooke himself had been made acquainted with the subject in regard to which this singular interview was desired; but it was not a part of his duty to communicate any information respecting it.  It had been necessary that his consent to certain arrangements should be asked before the invitation to Barty Burgess could be given; but his present mission was confined to an authority to give the invitation.

Old Mr Burgess was much surprised, and was at first disposed to decline the proposition made by the ‘old harridan,’ as he called her.  He had never put any restraint on his language in talking of Miss Stanbury with his nephew, and was not disposed to do so now, because she had taken a new vagary into her head.  But there was something in his nephew’s manner which at last induced him to discuss the matter rationally.