On that morning Mr Gibson was walking at an early hour along the road from Exeter to Cowley, contemplating his position and striving to arrange his plans.  What was he to do, and how was he to do it?  He was prepared to throw up his living, to abandon the cathedral, to leave the diocese, to make any sacrifice rather than take Camilla to his bosom.  Within the last six weeks he had learned to regard her with almost a holy horror.  He could not understand by what miracle of self-neglect he had fallen into so perilous an abyss.  He had long known Camilla’s temper.  But in those days in which he had been beaten like a shuttlecock between the Stanburys and the Frenches, he had lost his head and had done he knew not what.  ’Those whom the God chooses to destroy, he first maddens,’ said Mr Gibson to himself of himself, throwing himself back upon early erudition and pagan philosophy.  Then he looked across to the river Exe, and thought that there was hardly water enough there to cover the multiplicity of his sorrows.

But something must be done.  He had proceeded so far in forming a resolution, as he reached St. David’s Church on his return homewards.  His sagacious friend had told him that as soon as he had altered his mind, he was bound to let the lady know of it without delay.  ’You must remember,’ said the sagacious friend, ’that you will owe her much very much.’  Mr Gibson was perplexed in his mind when he reflected how much he might possibly be made to owe her if she should decide on appealing to a jury of her countrymen for justice.  But anything would be better than his home at St. Peter’s-cum-Pumpkin with Camilla sitting opposite to him as his wife.  Were there not distant lands in which a clergyman, unfortunate but still energetic, might find work to do?  Was there not all America?  And were there not Australia, New Zealand, Natal, all open to him?  Would not a missionary career among the Chinese be better for him than St. Peter’s-cum-Pumpkin with Camilla French for his wife?  By the time he had reached home his mind was made up.  He would write a letter to Camilla at once; and he would marry Arabella at once on any day that might be fixed on condition that Camilla would submit to her defeat without legal redress.  If legal redress should be demanded, he would put in evidence the fact that her own mother had been compelled to caution the tradesmen of the city in regard to her extravagance.

He did write his letter in an agony of spirit.  ’I sit down, Camilla, with a sad heart and a reluctant hand,’ he said, ’to communicate to you a fatal truth.  But truth should be made to prevail, and there is nothing in man so cowardly, so detrimental, and so unmanly as its concealment.  I have looked into myself, and have inquired of myself, and have assured myself, that were I to become your husband, I should not make you happy.  It would be of no use for me now to dilate on the reasons which have convinced me, but I am convinced, and I consider it my duty to inform you so at once.  I have been closeted with your mother, and have made her understand that it is so.