‘You’ll be there with them?’ said Camilla.  Mr Gibson blushed up to his ears as he heard the suggestion.  ’Of course you’ll be there with them, mamma.’

’No, my dear, I think not.  I fancy she wishes him to read to her or something of that sort.’  Then Mr Gibson, without speaking a word, but still blushing up to his ears, was taken to Arabella’s room; and Camilla, flouncing into the drawing-room, banged the door behind her.  She had hitherto fought her battle with considerable skill and with great courage, but her very success had made her imprudent.  She had become so imperious in the great position which she had reached, that she could not control her temper or wait till her power was confirmed.  The banging of that door was heard through the whole house, and every one knew why it was banged.  She threw herself on to a sofa, and then, instantly rising again, paced the room with quick step.  Could it be possible that there was treachery?  Was it on the cards that that weak, poor creature, Bella, was intriguing once again to defraud her of her husband?  There were different things that she now remembered.  Arabella, in that moment of bliss in which she had conceived herself to be engaged to Mr Gibson, had discarded her chignon.  Then she had resumed it in all its monstrous proportions.  Since that it had been lessened by degrees, and brought down, through various interesting but abnormal shapes, to a size which would hardly have drawn forth any anathema from Miss Stanbury.  And now, on this very morning, Arabella had put on a clean nightcap, with muslin frills.  It is perhaps not unnatural that a sick lady, preparing to receive a clergyman in her bedroom, should put on a clean nightcap; but to suspicious eyes small causes suffice to create alarm.  And if there were any such hideous wickedness in the wind, had Arabella any colleague in her villainy?  Could it be that the mother was plotting against her daughter’s happiness and respectability?  Camilla was well aware that her mamma would at first have preferred to give Arabella to Mr Gibson, had the choice in the matter been left to her.  But now, when the thing had been settled before all the world, would not such treatment on a mother’s part be equal to infanticide?  And then as to Mr Gibson himself!  Camilla was not prone to think little of her own charms, but she had been unable not to perceive that her lover had become negligent in his personal attentions to her.  An accepted lover, who deserves to have been accepted, should devote every hour at his command to his mistress.  But Mr Gibson had of late been so chary of his presence at Heavitree, that Camilla could not but have known that he took no delight in coming thither.  She had acknowledged this to herself; but she had consoled herself with the reflection that marriage would make this all right.  Mr Gibson was not the man to stray from his wife, and she could trust herself to obtain a sufficient hold upon her husband hereafter,