see on the road
before her but Brooke Burgess! As she said herself afterwards, it
immediately occurred to her, "that all the fat was in the fire." Here
had this young man come down, passing through Exeter without even a
visit to Miss Stanbury, and had clandestinely sought out the young
woman whom he wasn't to marry; and here was the young woman herself
flying in her aunt's face, when one scratch of a pen might ruin them
both! Martha entertained a sacred, awful, overcoming feeling about
her mistress's will. That she was to have something herself she
supposed, and her anxiety was not on that score; but she had heard
so much about it, had realised so fully the great power which Miss
Stanbury possessed, and had had her own feelings so rudely invaded by
alterations in Miss Stanbury's plans, that she had come to entertain
an idea that all persons around her should continually bear that will
in their memory. Hugh had undoubtedly been her favourite, and, could
Martha have dictated the will herself, she would still have made Hugh
the heir; but she had realised the resolution of her mistress so
far as to confess that the bulk of the property was to go back to a
Burgess. But there were very many Burgesses; and here was the one
who had been selected flying in the very face of the testatrix! What
was to be done? Were she to go back and not tell her mistress that
she had seen Brooke Burgess at Nuncombe then,--should the fact be
found out,--would the devoted anger of Miss Stanbury fall upon
her own head? It would be absolutely necessary that she should
tell the story, let the consequences be what they might;--but the
consequences, probably, would be very dreadful. "Mr. Brooke, that is
not you?" she said, as she came up to him, putting her basket down in
the middle of the dusty road.

"Then who can it be?" said Brooke, giving her his hand to shake.

"But what do bring you here, Mr. Brooke? Goodness me, what will
missus say?"

"I shall make that all straight. I'm going back to Exeter to-morrow."
Then there were many questions and many answers. He was sojourning
at Mrs. Crocket's, and had been there for the last two days. "Dear,
dear, dear," she said over and over again. "Deary me, deary me!" and
then she asked him whether it was "all along of Miss Dorothy" that he
had come. Of course, it was all along of Miss Dorothy. Brooke made no
secret about it. He had come down to see Dorothy's mother and sister,
and to say a bit of his own min