through them.  She had stood before him as he sat in his armchair, and he had been dumb in her presence.  It had perhaps been well for him that the eloquence of her indignation had been so great that she had hardly been able to pause a moment for a reply.  ‘Will you take your letter back again?’ she had said.  ‘I should be wrong to do that,’ he had lisped out in reply, ’because it is true.  As a Christian minister I could not stand with you at the altar with a lie in my mouth.’  In no other way did he attempt to excuse himself but that, twice repeated, filled up all the pause which she made for him.

There never had been such a case before so impudent, so cruel, so gross, so uncalled for, so unmanly, so unnecessary, so unjustifiable, so damnable so sure of eternal condemnation!  All this she said to him with loud voice, and clenched fist, and starting eyes regardless utterly of any listeners on the stairs, or of outside passers in the street.  In very truth she was moved to a sublimity of indignation.  Her low nature became nearly poetic under the wrong inflicted upon her.  She was almost tempted to tear him with her hands, and inflict upon him at the moment some terrible vengeance which should be told of for ever in the annals of Exeter.  A man so mean as he, so weak, so cowardly, one so little of a hero that he should dare to do it, and dare to sit there before her, and to say that he would do it!  ’Your gown shall be torn off your back, Sir, and the very boys of Exeter shall drag you through the gutters!’ To this threat he said nothing, but sat mute, hiding his face in his hands.  ’And now tell me this, sir, is there anything between you and Bella?’ But there was no voice in reply.  ’Answer my question, sir.  I have a right to ask it.’  Still he said not a word.  ’Listen to me.  Sooner than that you and she should be man and wife, I would stab her!  Yes, I would you poor, paltry, lying, cowardly creature!’ She remained with him for more than half an hour, and then banged out of the room, flashing back a look of scorn at him as she went.  Martha, before that day was over, had learned the whole story from Mr Gibson’s cook, and had told her mistress.

‘I did not think he had so much spirit in him,’ was Miss Stanbury’s answer.  Throughout Exeter the great wonder arising from the crisis was the amount of spirit which had been displayed by Mr Gibson.

When he was left alone he shook himself, and began to think that if there were danger that such interviews might occur frequently, he had better leave Exeter for good.  As he put his hand over his forehead, he declared to himself that a very little more of that kind of thing would kill him.  When a couple of hours had passed over his head he shook himself again, and sat down and wrote a letter to his intended mother-in-law.

‘I do not mean to complain,’ he said, ’God knows I have no right; but I cannot stand a repetition of what has occurred just now.  If your younger daughter comes to see me again I must refuse to see her, and shall leave the town.  I am ready to make what reparation may be possible for the mistake into which I have fallen.