friends, and I hope things will go straight now. I have had
a great deal to go through, Bella, and so have you;--but God will
temper the wind to the shorn lambs." How was the wind to be tempered
for the poor lamb who had gone forth shorn down to the very skin!

Soon after this Mrs. French returned to the room, and then there was
no more romance. Mrs. French had by no means forgiven Mr. Gibson
all the trouble he had brought into the family, and mixed a certain
amount of acrimony with her entertainment of him. She dictated to
him, treated him with but scant respect, and did not hesitate to let
him understand that he was to be watched very closely till he was
actually and absolutely married. The poor man had in truth no further
idea of escape. He was aware that he had done that which made it
necessary that he should bear a great deal, and that he had no right
to resent suspicion. When a day was fixed in June on which he should
be married at the church of Heavitree, and it was proposed that he
should be married by banns, he had nothing to urge to the contrary.
And when it was also suggested to him by one of the prebendaries of
the Cathedral that it might be well for him to change his clerical
duties for a period with the vicar of a remote parish in the north
of Cornwall,--so as to be out of the way of remark from those whom
he had scandalised by his conduct,--he had no objection to make to
that arrangement. When Mrs. MacHugh met him in the Close, and told
him that he was a gay Lothario, he shook his head with a melancholy
self-abasement, and passed on without even a feeling of anger. "When
they smite me on the right cheek, I turn unto them my left," he said
to himself, when one of the cathedral vergers remarked to him that
after all he was going to be married, at last. Even Bella became
dominant over him, and assumed with him occasionally the air of one
who had been injured.

Bella wrote a touching letter to her sister;--a letter that ought to
have touched Camilla, begging for forgiveness, and for one word of
sisterly love. Camilla answered the letter, but did not send a word
of sisterly love. "According to my way of thinking, you have been a
nasty sly thing, and I don't believe you'll ever be happy. As for
him, I'll never speak to him again." That was nearly the whole of her
letter. "You must leave it to time," said Mrs. French wisely; "she'll
come round some day." And then Mrs. French thought how bad it would
be for her