he himself might be called upon to inspect, and, perhaps, to aid the shifting on and the shifting off, he did begin to think that that side of the Scylla gulf ought to be avoided if possible.  And probably this propensity on his part, this feeling that he would like to reconsider the matter dispassionately before he gave himself up for good to his old love, may have been increased by Camilla’s apparent withdrawal of her claims.  He felt mildly grateful to the Heavitree household in general for accepting him in this time of his affliction, but he could not admit to himself that they had a right to decide upon him in private conclave, and allot him either to the one or to the other nuptials without consultation with himself.  To be swallowed up by Scylla he now recognised as his doom; but he thought he ought to be asked on which side of the gulf he would prefer to go down.  The way in which Camilla spoke of him as a thing that wasn’t hers, but another’s; and the way in which Arabella looked at him, as though he were hers and could never be another’s, wounded his manly pride.  He had always understood that he might have his choice, and he could not understand that the little mishap which had befallen him in the Close was to rob him of that privilege.

He used to drink tea at Heavitree in those days.  On one evening on going in he found himself alone with Arabella.  ‘Oh, Mr Gibson,’ she said, ’we weren’t sure whether you’d come.  And mamma and Camilla have gone out to Mrs Camadge’s.’  Mr Gibson muttered some word to the effect that he hoped he had kept nobody at home; and, as he did so, he remembered that he had distinctly said that he would come on this evening.  ‘I don’t know that I should have gone,’ sad Arabella, ’because I am not quite not quite myself at present.  No, not ill; not at all.  Don’t you know what it is, Mr Gibson, to be to be to be not quite yourself?’ Mr Gibson said that he had very often felt like that.  ’And one can’t get over it can one?’ continued Arabella.  ’There comes a presentiment that something is going to happen, and a kind of belief that something has happened, though you don’t know what; and the heart refuses to be light, and the spirit becomes abashed, and the mind, though it creates new thoughts, will not settle itself to its accustomed work.  I suppose it’s what the novels have called Melancholy.’

‘I suppose it is,’ said Mr Gibson.  ’But there’s generally some cause for it.  Debt for instance.’

’It’s nothing of that kind with me.  Its no debt, at least, that can be written down in the figures of ordinary arithmetic.  Sit down, Mr Gibson, and we will have some tea.’  Then, as she stretched forward to ring the bell, he thought that he never in his life had seen anything so unshapely as that huge wen at the back of her head.  ’Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens!’ He could not help quoting the words to himself.  She was dressed with some attempt at being smart, but her ribbons were soiled, and her lace was tawdry, and the fabric of her dress was old and dowdy.  He was quite sure that he would feel no pride in calling her Mrs Gibson, no pleasure in having her all to himself at his own hearth.  ’I hope we shall escape the bitterness of Miss Stanbury’s tongue if we drink tea tete-a-tete,’ she said, with her sweetest smile.