But Arabella and Camilla were both away when Mr Gibson called to tell Mrs French of his altered plans.  And as he asked, not for his lady-love, but for Mrs French herself, it is probable that he watched his opportunity and that he knew to what cares his Camilla was then devoting herself.  ’Perhaps it is quite as well that I should find you alone,’ he said, after sundry preludes, to his future mother-in-law, ’because you can make Camilla understand this better than I can.  I must put off the day for about three weeks.’

‘Three weeks, Mr Gibson?’

‘Or a month.  Perhaps we had better say the 29th of April.’  Mr Gibson had by this time thrown off every fear that he might have entertained of the mother, and could speak to her of such an unwarrantable change of plans with tolerable equanimity.

‘But I don’t know that that will suit Camilla at all.’

‘She can name any other day she pleases, of course, that is in May.’

‘But why is this to be?’

’There are things about money, Mrs French, which I cannot arrange sooner.  And I find that unfortunately I must go up to London.’  Though many other questions were asked, nothing further was got out of Mr Gibson on that occasion; and he left the house with a perfect understanding on his own part and on that of Mrs French that the marriage was postponed till some day still to be fixed, but which could not and should not be before the 29th of April.  Mrs French asked him why he did not come up and see Camilla.  He replied, false man that he was, that he had hoped to have seen her this morning, and that he would come again before the week was over.

Then it was that Camilla spoke her mind out plainly.  ’I shall go to his house at once,’ she said, ’and find out all about it.  I don’t understand it.  I don’t understand it at all; and I won’t put up with it.  He shall know who he has to deal with, if he plays tricks upon me.  Mamma, I wonder you let him out of the house, till you had made him come back to his old day.’

‘What could I do, my dear?’

’What could you do?  Shake him out of it as I would have done.  But he didn’t dare to tell me because he is a coward.’

Camilla in all this showed her spirit; but she allowed her anger to hurry her away into an indiscretion.  Arabella was present, and Camilla should have repressed her rage.

‘I don’t think he’s at all a coward,’ said Arabella.

’That’s my business.  I suppose I’m entitled to know what he is better than you.’

‘All the same I don’t think Mr Gibson is at all a coward,’ said Arabella, again pleading the cause of the man who had misused her.

’Now, Arabella, I won’t take any interference from you; mind that.  I say it was cowardly, and he should have come to me.  It’s my concern, and I shall go to him.  I’m not going to be stopped by any shilly-shally nonsense, when my future respectability, perhaps, is at stake.  All Exeter knows that the marriage is to take place on the 31st of this month.’