’Never mind.  Nothing shall ever make me speak to him again, not if he married her three times over; nor to her.  She is a nasty, sly, good-for-nothing thing!’

‘But, Bella—­’

’Don’t talk to me, mamma.  There never was such a thing done before since people were people at all.  She has been doing it all the time.  I know she has.’

Nevertheless Arabella did sit down to tea with the two lovers that night.  There was a terrible scene between her and Camilla; but Camilla held her own; and Arabella, being the weaker of the two, was vanquished by the expenditure of her own small energies.  Camilla argued that as her sister’s chance was gone, and as the prize had come in her own way, there was no good reason why it should be lost to the family altogether, because Arabella could not win it.  When Arabella called her a treacherous vixen and a heartless, profligate hussy, she spoke out freely, and said that she wasn’t going to be abused.  A gentleman to whom she was attached had asked her for her hand, and she had given it.  If Arabella chose to make herself a fool she might but what would be the effect?  Simply that all the world would know that she, Arabella, was disappointed.  Poor Bella at last gave way, put on her discarded chignon, and came down to tea.  Mr Gibson was already in the room when she entered it.  ‘Arabella,’ he said, getting up to greet her, ’I hope you will congratulate me.’  He had planned his little speech and his manner of making it, and had wisely decided that in this way might he best get over the difficulty.

‘Oh yes of course,’ she said, with a little giggle, and then a sob, and then a flood of tears.

‘Dear Bella feels these things so strongly,’ said Mrs French.

‘We have never been parted yet,’ said Camilla.  Then Arabella tapped the head of the sofa three or four times sharply with her knuckles.  It was the only protest against the reading of the scene which Camilla had given of which she was capable at that moment.  After that Mrs French gave out the tea, Arabella curled herself upon the sofa as though she were asleep, and the two lovers settled down to proper lover-like conversation.

The reader may be sure that Camilla was not slow in making the fact of her engagement notorious through the city.  It was not probably true that the tidings of her success had anything to do with Miss Stanbury’s illness; but it was reported by many that such was the case.  It was in November that the arrangement was made, and it certainly was true that Miss Stanbury was rather ill about the same time.  ’You know, you naughty Lothario, that you did give her some ground to hope that she might dispose of her unfortunate niece,’ said Camilla playfully to her own one, when this illness was discussed between them.  ’But you are caught now, and your wings are clipped, and you are never to be a naughty Lothario again.’  The clerical Don Juan bore it all, awkwardly indeed, but with good humour, and declared that all his troubles of that sort were over, now and for ever.  Nevertheless he did not name the day, and Camilla began to feel that there might be occasion for a little more of that imperious roughness which she had at her command.