he could not see his neighbour's face, he moved his chair. He was not
going to fight such a duel as this with the disadvantage of the sun
in his eyes.

[Illustration: Barty Burgess.]

Hitherto there had hardly been a word spoken. Miss Stanbury had
muttered something as she was curtseying, and Barty Burgess had made
some return. Then she began: "Mr. Burgess," she said, "I am indebted
to you for your complaisance in coming here at my request." To this
he bowed again. "I should not have ventured thus to trouble you were
it not that years are dealing more hardly with me than they are
with you, and that I could not have ventured to discuss a matter
of deep interest otherwise than in my own room." It was her room
now, certainly, by law; but Barty Burgess remembered it when it was
his mother's room, and when she used to give them all their meals
there,--now so many, many years ago! He bowed again, and said not a
word. He knew well that she could sooner be brought to her point by
his silence than by his speech.

She was a long time coming to her point. Before she could do so she
was forced to allude to times long past, and to subjects which she
found it very difficult to touch without saying that which would
either belie herself, or seem to be severe upon him. Though she had
prepared herself, she could hardly get the words spoken, and she was
greatly impeded by the obstinacy of his silence. But at last her
proposition was made to him. She told him that his nephew, Brooke,
was about to be married to her niece, Dorothy; and that it was her
intention to make Brooke her heir in the bulk of the property which
she had received under the will of the late Mr. Brooke Burgess.
"Indeed," she said, "all that I received at your brother's hands
shall go back to your brother's family unimpaired." He only bowed,
and would not say a word. Then she went on to say that it had at
first been a matter to her of deep regret that Brooke should have set
his affections upon her niece, as there had been in her mind a strong
desire that none of her own people should enjoy the reversion of the
wealth, which she had always regarded as being hers only for the
term of her life; but that she had found that the young people had
been so much in earnest, and that her own feeling had been so near
akin to a prejudice, that she had yielded. When this was said Barty
smiled instead of bowing, and Miss Stanbury felt that there might be
something worse even