Dorothy was received at home with so much affection and such expressions of esteem as to afford her much consolation in her misery. Both her mother and her sister approved of her conduct. Mrs Stanbury’s approval was indeed accompanied by many expressions of regret as to the good things lost. She was fully alive to the fact that life in the Close at Exeter was better for her daughter than life in their little cottage at Nuncombe Putney. The outward appearance which Dorothy bore on her return home was proof of this. Her clothes, the set of her hair, her very gestures and motions had framed themselves on town ideas. The faded, wildered, washed-out look, the uncertain, purposeless bearing which had come from her secluded life and subjection to her sister had vanished from her. She had lived among people, and had learned something of their gait and carriage. Money we know will do almost everything, and no doubt money had had much to do with this. It is very pretty to talk of the alluring simplicity of a clean calico gown; but poverty will shew itself to be meagre, dowdy, and draggled in a woman’s dress, let the woman be ever so simple, ever so neat, ever so independent, and ever so high-hearted. Mrs Stanbury was quite alive to all that her younger daughter was losing. Had she not received two offers of marriage while she was at Exeter? There was no possibility that offers of marriage should be made in the cottage at Nuncombe Putney. A man within the walls of the cottage would have been considered as much out of place as a wild bull. It had been matter of deep regret to Mrs Stanbury that her daughter should not have found herself able to marry Mr Gibson. She knew that there was no matter for reproach in this, but it was a misfortune, a great misfortune. And in the mother’s breast there had been a sad, unrepressed feeling of regret that young people should so often lose their chances in the world through over-fancifulness, and ignorance as to their own good. Now when she heard the story of Brooke Burgess, she could not but think that had Dorothy remained at Exeter, enduring patiently such hard words as her aunt might speak, the love affair might have been brought at some future time to a happy conclusion. She did not say all this; but there came on her a silent melancholy, made expressive by constant little shakings of the head and a continued reproachful sadness of demeanour, which was quite as intelligible to Priscilla as would have been any spoken words. But Priscilla’s approval of her sister’s conduct was clear, outspoken, and satisfactory. She had been quite sure that her sister had been right about Mr Gibson; and was equally sure that she was now right about Brooke Burgess. Priscilla had in her mind an idea that if B. B., as they called him, was half as good as her sister represented him to be — for indeed Dorothy endowed him with every virtue consistent with humanity — he would not be deterred from his pursuit either by Dolly’s letter or by Aunt Stanbury’s commands. But of this she thought it wise to say nothing. She paid Dolly the warm and hitherto unaccustomed compliment of equality, assuming to regard her sister’s judgment and persistent independence to be equally strong with her own; and, as she knew well, she could not have gone further than this. ‘I never shall agree with you about Aunt Stanbury,’ she said. ‘To me she seems to be so imperious, so exacting, and also so unjust, as to be unbearable.’

‘But she is affectionate,’ said Dolly.

‘So is the dog that bites you, and, for aught I know, the horse that kicks you. But it is ill living with biting dogs and kicking horses. But all that matters little as you are still your own mistress. How strange these nine months have been, with you in Exeter, while we have been at the Clock House. And here we are, together again in the old way, just as though nothing had happened.’ But Dorothy knew well that a great deal had happened, and that her life could never be as it had been heretofore. The very tone in which her sister spoke to her was proof of this. She had an infinitely greater possession in herself than had belonged to her before her residence at Exeter; but that possession was so heavily mortgaged and so burthened as to make her believe that the change was to be regretted.

At the end of the first week there came a letter from Aunt Stanbury to Dorothy. It began by saying that Dolly had left behind her certain small properties which had now been made up in a parcel and sent by the railway, carriage paid. ‘But they weren’t mine at all,’ said Dolly, alluding to certain books in which she had taken delight.’ She means to give them to you,’ said Priscilla, ‘and I think you must take them.’ ‘And the shawl is no more mine than it is yours, though I wore it two or three times in the winter.’ Priscilla was of opinion that the shawl must be taken also. Then the letter spoke of the writer’s health, and at last fell into such a strain of confidential gossip that Mrs Stanbury, when she read it, could not understand that there had been a quarrel. ‘Martha says that she saw Camilla French in the street today, such a guy in her new finery as never was seen before except on May-day.’ Then in the postscript Dorothy was enjoined to answer this letter quickly. ‘None of your short scraps, my dear,’ said Aunt Stanbury.

‘She must mean you to go back to her,’ said Mrs Stanbury.

‘No doubt she does,’ said Priscilla; ‘but Dolly need not go because my aunt means it. We are not her creatures.’

But Dorothy answered her aunt’s letter in the spirit in which it had been written. She asked after her aunt’s health, thanked her aunt for the gift of the books in each of which her name had been clearly written, protested about the shawl, sent her love to Martha and her kind regards to Jane, and expressed a hope that C. F. enjoyed her new clothes. She described the cottage, and was funny about the cabbage stumps in the garden, and at last succeeded in concocting a long epistle. ‘I suppose there will he a regular correspondence,’ said Priscilla.

Two days afterwards, however, the correspondence took altogether another form. The cottage in which they now lived was supposed to be beyond the beat of the wooden-legged postman, and therefore it was necessary that they should call at the post-office for their letters. On the morning in question Priscilla obtained a thick letter from Exeter for her mother, and knew that it had come from her aunt. Her aunt could hardly have found it necessary to correspond with Dorothy’s mother so soon after that letter to Dorothy had been written had there not arisen some very peculiar cause. Priscilla, after much meditation, thought it better that the letter should be opened in Dorothy’s absence, and in Dorothy’s absence the following letter was read both by Priscilla and her mother.

‘The Close, March 19, 186-.

DEAR SISTER STANBURY,

After much consideration, I think it best to send under cover to you the enclosed letter from Mr Brooke Burgess, intended for your daughter Dorothy. You will see that I have opened it and read it as I was clearly entitled to do, the letter having been addressed to my niece while she was supposed to be under my care. I do not like to destroy the letter, though, perhaps, that would be best; but I would advise you to do so, if it be possible, without shewing it to Dorothy. I have told Mr Brooke Burgess what I have done.............