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.
"Of course, I shall not need to know where you go or where you don't
go," she had written; "but after all that has passed there must not
be any positive intercourse between my house and the bank." And now
he had spoken of going over to C and B, as he called them, with the
utmost indifference. Miss Stanbury had looked very grave, but had
said nothing. She had determined to be on her guard, so that she
should not be driven to quarrel with Brooke if she could avoid it.

Bartholomew Burgess was a tall, thin, ill-tempered old man, as
well-known in Exeter as the cathedral, and respected after a fashion.
No one liked him. He said ill-natured things of all his neighbours,
and had never earned any reputation for doing good-natured acts. But
he had lived in Exeter for nearly seventy years, and had achieved
that sort of esteem which comes from long tenure. And he had
committed no great iniquities in the course of his fifty years of
business. The bank had never stopped payment, and he had robbed no
one. He had not swallowed up widows and orphans, and had done his
work in the firm of Cropper and Burgess after the old-fashioned safe
manner, which leads neither to riches nor to ruin. Therefore he was
respected. But he was a discontented, sour old man, who believed
himself to have been injured by all his own friends, who disliked
his own partners because they had bought that which had, at any rate,
never belonged to him;--and whose strongest passion it was to hate
Miss Stanbury of the Close.

"She's got a parson by the hand, now," said the uncle, as he
continued his caution to the nephew.

"There was a clergyman there last night."

"No doubt, and she'll play him off against you, and you against him;
and then she'll throw you both over. I know her."

"She has got a right to do what she likes with her own, Uncle Barty."

"And how did she get it? Never mind. I'm not going to set you against
her, if you're her favourite for the moment. She has a niece with her
there,--hasn't she?"

"One of her brother's daughters."

"They say she's going to make that clergyman marry her."

"What;--Mr. Gibson?"

"Yes. They tell me he was as good as engaged to another girl,--one of
the Frenches of Heavitree. And therefore dear Jemima could do nothing
better than interfere. When she has succeeded i