'
'A very long time,' said Brooke. Then he paused for a minute, thinking
how he might best tell her that which he had now resolved should be
told on this occasion. Dorothy finished her tea and got up as though
she were about to go to her duty upstairs. She had been as yet hardly
an hour in the room, and the period of her relief was not fairly over.
But there had come something of a personal flavour in their
conversation which prompted her, unconsciously, to leave him. She had,
without any special indication of herself, included herself among that
company of old maids who are born and live and die without that vital
interest in the affairs of life which nothing but family duties, the
care of children, or at least of a husband, will give to a woman. If
she had not meant this she had felt it. He had understood her meaning,
or at least her feeling, and had taken upon himself to assure her that
she was not one of the company whose privations she had endeavoured to
describe. Her instinct rather than her reason put her at once upon her
guard, and she prepared to leave the room.
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