"Dorothy, it is not at all becoming that you should have a correspondence with any young man of such a nature that you should be ashamed to shew it to your aunt."
"I am not ashamed of anything," said Dorothy sturdily.
"I don't know what young women in these days have come to," continued Miss Stanbury. "There is no respect, no subjection, no obedience, and too often—no modesty."
"Does that mean me, Aunt Stanbury?" asked Dorothy.
"To tell you the truth, Dorothy, I don't think you ought to have been receiving love-letters from Brooke Burgess when I was lying ill in bed. I didn't expect it of you. I tell you fairly that I didn't expect it of you."
Then Dorothy spoke out her mind. "As you think that, Aunt Stanbury, I had better go away. And if you please I will,—when you are well enough to spare me."
"Pray don't think of me at all," said her aunt.
"And as for love-letters,—Mr. Burgess has written to me once. I don't think that there can be anything immodest in opening a letter when it comes by the post. And as soon as I had it I determined to shew it to you. As for what happened before, when Mr. Burgess spoke to me, which was long, long after all that about Mr. Gibson was over, I told him that it couldn't be so; and I thought there would be no more about it. You were so ill that I could not tell you. Now you know it all."
"I have not seen your letter to him."
"I shall never shew it to anybody. But you have said things, Aunt Stanbury, that are very cruel."