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Updated: May 21, 2025
On the morning after his arrival Brooke Burgess had declared aloud in Miss Stanbury's parlour that he was going over to the bank to see his uncle. Now there was in this almost a breach of contract. Miss Stanbury, when she invited the young man to Exeter, had stipulated that there should be no intercourse between her house and the bank.
Sir Peter was not a man of many words, or given to talk frequently of his patients; but it was clearly Sir Peter's opinion that Miss Stanbury's mind was ill at ease. She had become discontented with life, and therefore it was that she cared no longer for the combat of tongues, and had become cold even towards the card-table.
While he remained in Miss Stanbury's house he was to remain there as though there were no such person as Mr. Bartholomew Burgess in Exeter. At this time Brooke Burgess was a man just turned thirty, and was a clerk in the Ecclesiastical Record Office, in Somerset House.
The reader may perhaps remember that when Miss Stanbury's invitation was sent to her niece, she was pleased to promise that such visits should be permitted on a Wednesday morning. Such a visit was now to be made, and old Miss Stanbury was quite moved by the occasion. "I shall not see them, you know, Martha," she had said, on the afternoon of the preceding day. "I suppose not, ma'am."
Gerald Stanbury's loud, sonorous voice speaking out clearly: "I decline to serve, Mr. Bainrothe, after that erasure. You understand that, of course. It was a farce to send for me to-day, tinder these circumstances." "How could I know, my dear sir, that this erasure had been made?" was the soft and specious rejoinder. "It must have been done in the last few months.
It is hoped that a certain quarter of lamb will not have been forgotten, a quarter of lamb that was sent as a peace-offering from Exeter to Nuncombe Putney by the hands of Miss Stanbury's Martha, not with purposes of corruption, not intended to buy back the allegiance of Dorothy, folded delicately and temptingly in one of the best table napkins, with no idea of bribery, but sent as presents used to be sent of old in the trains of great ambassadors as signs of friendship and marks of true respect.
Being fully aware of Miss Stanbury's objection to the marriage, she could not venture to express her approbation of it. It was very improper, in Martha's mind, that any young woman should have a follower, when the "missus" didn't approve of it. She understood well enough that, in that matter of followers, privileges are allowed to young ladies which are not accorded to maid servants.
Monfort seemed to have imbibed for his neighbor and friend, and which his physicians said must be regarded. Allusion was made, not unmixed with bitterness, in Mr. Stanbury's note, to this assertion of hers, which he pronounced, if true, to rest on the misrepresentations of villains who had interposed between the too confiding Mr. Monfort and himself for no good purpose.
Brooke had just informed her that he intended to make her his wife as speedily as possible, with her aunt's consent if possible, but if not, then without it. He had ridiculed the idea of his being stopped by Miss Stanbury's threats, and had said all this in such fashion that even Priscilla herself had only listened and obeyed.
Arabella's edifice had, in Miss Stanbury's eyes, been the ugliest thing in art that she had known; but, now, its absence offended her, and she most untruly declared that she had come upon the young woman in the middle of the day just out of her bed-room and almost in her dressing-gown.
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