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previously known Hugh Stanbury. There could be no comparison

between the two men. There was a brightness about Hugh which Lord

Peterborough could not rival. Otherwise, except for this reason, it

seemed to her to be impossible that any young woman should fail to love

Lord Peterborough when asked to do so.

 

About the middle of September there came a very happy time for her,

when Hugh was asked down to shoot partridges, in the doing of which,

however, all his brightness did not bring him near in excellence to his

host. Lord Peterborough had been shooting partridges all his life, and

shot them with a precision which excited Hugh’s envy. To own the truth,

Stanbury did not shoot well, and was treated rather with scorn by the

gamekeeper; but in other respects he spent three or four of the

happiest days of his life. He had his work to do, and after the second

day over the stubbles, declared that the exigencies of the D. R. were

too severe to enable him to go out with his gun again; but those

rambles about the park with Nora, for which, among the exigencies of

the D. R., he did find opportunity, were never to be forgotten.

 

‘Of course I remember that it might have been mine,’ she said, sitting

with him under an old, hollow, withered sloping stump of an oak, which

still, however, had sufficient of a head growing from one edge of the

trunk to give them the shade they wanted; ‘and if you wish me to own to

regrets I will.’

 

‘It would kill me, I think, if you did; and yet I cannot get it out of

my head that if it had not been for me your rank and position in life

might have been so so suitable to you.’

 

‘No, Hugh; there you’re wrong. I have thought about it a good deal,

too; and I know very well that the cold beefsteak in the cupboard is

the thing for me. Caroline will do very well here. She looks like a

peeress, and bears her honours grandly; but they will never harden her.

I, too, could have been magnificent with fine feathers. Most birds are

equal to so much as that. I fancy that I could have looked the part of

the fine English lady, and could have patronised clergymen’s wives in

the country, could have held my own among my peers in London, and could

have kept Mrs Crutch in order; but it would have hardened me, and I

should have learned to think that to be a lady of fashion was

everything.’

 

‘I do not believe a bit of it.’

 

‘It is better as it is, Hugh for me at least. I had always a sort of

conviction that it would be better, though I had a longing to play the

other part. Then you came, and you have saved me. Nevertheless, it is

very nice, Hugh, to have the oaks to sit under.’ Stanbury declared that

it was very nice.

 

But still nothing was settled about the wedding. Trevelyan’s condition

was so uncertain that it was very difficult to settle anything. Though

nothing was said on the subject between Stanbury and Mrs Trevelyan, and

nothing written between Nora and her sister, it could not but be

remembered that should Trevelyan die, his widow would require a home

with them. They were deterred from choosing a house by this reflection,

and were deterred from naming a day also by the consideration that

were they to do so, Trevelyan’s state might still probably prevent it.

But this was arranged, that if Trevelyan lived through the winter, or

even if he should not live, their marriage should not be postponed

beyond the end of March. Till that time Lord Peterborough would remain

at Monkhams, and it was understood that Nora’s invitation extended to

that period.

 

‘If my wife does not get tired of you, I shall not,’ Lord Peterborough

said to Nora. ‘The thing is that when you do go we shall miss you so

terribly.’ In September, too, there happened another event which took

Stanbury to Exeter, and all needful particulars as to that event shall

be narrated in the next chapter.

CHAPTER XCVII

MRS BROOKE BURGESS

 

It may be doubted whether there was a happier young woman in England

than Dorothy Stanbury when that September came which was to make her

the wife of Mr Brooke Burgess, the new partner in the firm of Cropper

and Burgess. Her early aspirations in life had been so low, and of late

there had come upon her such a succession of soft showers of success,

mingled now and then with slight threatenings of storms which had

passed away, that the Close at Exeter seemed to her to have become a

very Paradise. Her aunt’s temper had sometimes been to her as the

threat of a storm, and there had been the Gibson marriage treaty, and

the short-lived opposition to the other marriage treaty which had

seemed to her to be so very preferable; but everything had gone at last

as though she had been Fortune’s favourite; and now had come this

beautiful arrangement about Cropper and Burgess, which would save her

from being carried away to live among strangers in London! When she

first became known to us on her coming to Exeter, in compliance with

her aunt’s suggestion, she was timid, silent, and altogether without

self-reliance. Even they who knew her best had never guessed that she

possessed a keen sense of humour, a nice appreciation of character, and

a quiet reticent wit of her own, under that staid and frightened

demeanour. Since her engagement with Brooke Burgess it seemed to those

who watched her that her character had become changed, as does that of

a flower when it opens itself in its growth. The sweet gifts of nature

within became visible, the petals sprang to view, and the leaves spread

themselves, and the sweet scent was felt upon the air. Had she remained

at Nuncombe, it is probable that none would ever have known her but her

sister. It was necessary to this flower that it should be warmed by the

sun of life, and strengthened by the breezes of opposition, and filled

by the showers of companionship, before it could become aware of its

own loveliness. Dorothy was one who, had she remained ever unseen in

the retirement of her mother’s village cottage, would have lived and

died ignorant of even her own capabilities for enjoyment. She had not

dreamed that she could win a man’s love—had hardly dreamed till she had

lived at Exeter that she had love of her own to give back in return.

She had not known that she could be firm in her own opinion, that she

could laugh herself and cause others to laugh, that she could be a lady

and know that other women were not so, that she had good looks of her

own and could be very happy when told of them by lips that she loved.

The flower that blows the quickest is never the sweetest. The fruit

that ripens tardily has ever the finest flavour. It is often the same

with men and women. The lad who talks at twenty as men should talk at

thirty, has seldom much to say worth the hearing when he is forty; and

the girl who at eighteen can shine in society with composure, has

generally given over shining before she is a full-grown woman. With

Dorothy the scent and beauty of the flower, and the flavour of the

fruit, had come late; but the fruit will keep, and the flower will not

fall to pieces with the heat of an evening.

 

‘How marvellously your bride has changed since she has been here,’ said

Mrs MacHugh to Miss Stanbury. ‘We thought she couldn’t say boo to a

goose at first; but she holds her own now among the best of ‘em.’

 

‘Of course she does; why shouldn’t she? I never knew a Stanbury yet that

was a fool.’

 

They are a wonderful family, of course,’ said Mrs MacHugh; ‘but I think

that of all of them she is the most wonderful. Old Barty said something

to her at my house yesterday that wasn’t intended to be kind.’

 

‘When did he ever intend to be kind?’

 

‘But he got no change out of her. “The Burgesses have been in Exeter a

long time,” she said, “and I don’t see why we should not get on at any

rate as well as those before us.” Barty grunted and growled and slunk

away. He thought she would shake in her shoes when he spoke to her.’

 

‘He has never been able to make a Stanbury shake in her shoes yet,’

said the old lady.

 

Early in September, Dorothy went to Nuncombe Putney to spend a week

with her mother and sister at the cottage. She had insisted on this,

though Priscilla had hinted, somewhat unnecessarily, that Dorothy, with

her past comforts and her future prospects, would find the

accommodation at the cottage very limited. ‘I suppose you and I, Pris,

can sleep in the same bed, as we always did,’ she said, with a tear in

each eye. Then Priscilla had felt ashamed of herself, and had bade her

come.

 

‘The truth is, Dolly,’ said the elder sister, ‘that we feel so unlike

marrying and giving in marriage at Nuncombe, that I’m afraid you’ll

lose your brightness and become dowdy, and grim, and misanthropic, as

we are. When mamma and I sit down to what we call dinner, I always feel

that there is a grace hovering in the air different to that which she

says.’

 

‘And what is it, Pris?’

 

‘“Pray, God, don’t quite starve us, and let everybody else have

indigestion.” We don’t say it out loud, but there it is; and the spirit

of it might damp the orange blossoms.’

 

She went of course, and the orange blossoms were not damped. She had

long walks with her sister round by Niddon and Ridleigh, and even as

far distant as Cockchaffington, where much was said about that wicked

Colonel as they stood looking at the porch of the church. ‘I shall be

so happy,’ said Dorothy, ‘when you and mother come to us. It will be

such a joy to me that you should be my guests.’

 

‘But we shall not come.’

 

‘Why not, Priscilla?’

 

‘I know it will be so. Mamma will not care for going, if I do not go.’

 

‘And why should you not come?’

 

‘For a hundred reasons, all of which you know, Dolly. I am stiff,

impracticable, ill-conditioned, and very bad at going about visiting. I

am always thinking that other people ought to have indigestion, and

perhaps I might come to have some such feeling about you and Brooke.’

 

‘I should not be at all afraid of that.’

 

‘I know that my place in the world is here, at Nuncombe Putney. I have

a pride about myself, and think that I never did wrong but once when I

let mamma go into that odious Clock House. It is a bad pride, and yet

I’m proud of it. I hav’n’t got a gown fit to go and stay with you, when

you become a grand lady in Exeter. I don’t doubt you’d give me any sort

of gown I wanted.’

 

‘Of course I would. Ain’t we sisters, Pris?’

 

‘I shall not be so much your sister as he will be your husband.

Besides, I hate to take things. When Hugh sends money, and for mamma’s

sake it is accepted, I always feel uneasy while it lasts, and think

that that plague of an indigestion ought to come upon me also.

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