Then it was that Camilla spoke her mind out plainly. "I shall go to
his house at once," she said, "and find out all about it. I don't
understand it. I don't understand it at all; and I won't put up with
it. He shall know who he has to deal with, if he plays tricks upon
me. Mamma, I wonder you let him out of the house, till you had made
him come back to his old day."

"What could I do, my dear?"

"What could you do? Shake him out of it,--as I would have done. But
he didn't dare to tell me,--because he is a coward."

Camilla in all this showed her spirit; but she allowed her anger
to hurry her away into an indiscretion. Arabella was present, and
Camilla should have repressed her rage.

"I don't think he's at all a coward," said Arabella.

"That's my business. I suppose I'm entitled to know what he is better
than you."

"All the same I don't think Mr. Gibson is at all a coward," said
Arabella, again pleading the cause of the man who had misused her.

"Now, Arabella, I won't take any interference from you; mind that.
I say it was cowardly, and he should have come to me. It's my
concern, and I shall go to him. I'm not going to be stopped by any
shilly-shally nonsense, when my future respectability, perhaps, is
at stake. All Exeter knows that the marriage is to take place on the
31st of this month."

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