On the next day Camilla absolutely did go to Mr Gibson’s house at an early hour, at nine, when, as she thought, he would surely be at breakfast.  But he had flown.  He had left Exeter that morning by an early train, and his servant thought that he had gone to London.  On the next morning Camilla got a note from him, written in London.  It affected to be very cheery and affectionate, beginning ‘Dearest Cammy,’ and alluding to the postponement of his wedding as though it were a thing so fixed as to require no further question.  Camilla answered this letter, still in much wrath, complaining, protesting, expostulating throwing in his teeth the fact that the day had been fixed by him, and not by her.  And she added a postscript in the following momentous words ’If you have any respect for the name of your future wife, you will fall back upon your first arrangement.’  To this she got simply a line of an answer, declaring that this falling back was impossible, and then nothing was heard of him for ten days.

He had gone from Tuesday to Saturday week, and the first that Camilla saw of him was his presence in the reading desk when he chaunted the cathedral service as priest-vicar on the Sunday.

At this time Arabella was very ill, and was confined to her bed.  Mr Martin declared that her system had become low from over anxiety, that she was nervous, weak, and liable to hysterics, that her feelings were in fact too many for her, and that her efforts to overcome them, and to face the realities of the world, had exhausted her.  This was, of course, not said openly, at the town-cross of Exeter; but such was the opinion which Mr Martin gave in confidence to the mother.  ‘Fiddle-de-dee!’ said Camilla, when she was told of feelings, susceptibilities, and hysterics.  At the present moment she had a claim to the undivided interest of the family, and she believed that her sister’s illness was feigned in order to defraud her of her rights.  ’My dear, she is ill,’ said Mrs French.  ’Then let her have a dose of salts,’ said the stern Camilla.  This was on the Sunday afternoon.  Camilla had endeavoured to see Mr Gibson as he came out of the cathedral, but had failed.  Mr Gibson had been detained within the building no doubt by duties connected with the choral services.  On that evening he got a note from Camilla, and quite early on the Monday morning he came up to Heavitree.

‘You will find her in the drawing-room,’ said Mrs French, as she opened the hall-door for him.  There was a smile on her face as she spoke, but it was a forced smile.  Mr Gibson did not smile at all.

‘Is it all right with her?’ he asked.

’Well you had better go to her.  You see, Mr Gibson, young ladies, when they are going to be married, think that they ought to have their own way a little, just for the last time, you know.’  He took no notice of the joke, but went with slow steps up to the drawing-room.  It would be inquiring too curiously to ask whether Camilla, when she embraced him, discerned that he had fortified his courage that morning with a glass of curacoa.