s, and handling the real linens and admiring
the fine cambrics spread out before them on the shop counters by
obsequious attendants. And the questions asked of her by her sister,
whether this was good enough for so august an occasion, or that
sufficiently handsome, must have been harassing. She could not have
failed to remember that it ought all to have been done for her,--that
had she not been treated with monstrous injustice, with most
unsisterly cruelty, all these good things would have been spread on
her behoof. But she went on and endured it, and worked diligently
with her needle, and folded and unfolded as she was desired, and
became as it were quite a younger sister in the house,--creeping out
by herself now and again into the purlieus of the city, to find such
consolation as she might receive from her solitary thoughts.

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.