Having done such a deed she felt that Dorothy, though Dorothy knew nothing about it, ought in her gratitude to listen patiently to anything that she might now choose to say against Priscilla.
But Dorothy was in truth very miserable, and in her misery wrote a long letter that afternoon to her mother,--which, however, it will not be necessary to place entire among the Stanbury records,--begging that she might be informed as to the true circumstances of the case.
She did not say a word of censure in regard either to her mother or sister; but she expressed an opinion in the mildest words which she could use, that if anything had happened which had compromised their names since their residence at the Clock House, she, Dorothy, had better go home and join them.

The meaning of which was that it would not become her to remain in the house in the Close, if the house in the Close would be disgraced by her presence.

Poor Dorothy had taught herself to think that the iniquity of roaring lions spread itself very widely.
In the afternoon she made some such proposition to her aunt in ambiguous terms.

"Go home!" said Miss Stanbury.

"Now ?" "If you think it best, Aunt Stanbury." "And put yourself in the middle of all this iniquity and abomination! I don't suppose you want to know the woman ?" "No, indeed!" "Or the man ?" "Oh, Aunt Stanbury!" "It's my belief that no decent gentleman in Exeter would look at you again if you were to go and live among them at Nuncombe Putney while all this is going on.