if the daughter who was to be her future companion did not
"come round" some day.

And so it was settled that they should be married in Heavitree
Church,--Mr. Gibson and his first love,--and things went on
pretty much as though nothing had been done amiss. The gentleman
from Cornwall came down to take Mr. Gibson's place at St.
Peter's-cum-Pumpkin, while his duties in the Cathedral were
temporarily divided among the other priest-vicars,--with some amount
of grumbling on their part. Bella commenced her modest preparations
without any of the eclat which had attended Camilla's operations, but
she felt more certainty of ultimate success than had ever fallen to
Camilla's lot. In spite of all that had come and gone, Bella never
feared again that Mr. Gibson would be untrue to her. In regard to
him, it must be doubted whether Nemesis ever fell upon him with a
hand sufficiently heavy to punish him for the great sins which he
had manifestly committed. He had encountered a bad week or two, and
there had been days in which, as has been said, he thought of Natal,
of ecclesiastical censures, and even of annihilation; but no real
punishment seemed to fall upon him. It may be doubted whether, when
the whole arrangement was settled for him, and when he heard that
Camilla had yielded to the decrees of Fate, he did not rather flatter
himself on being a successful man of intrigue,--whether he did not
take some glory to himself for his good fortune with women, and pride
himself amidst his self-reproaches for the devotion which had been
displayed for him by the fair sex in general. It is quite possible
that he taught himself to believe that at one time Dorothy Stanbury
was devotedly in love with him, and that when he reckoned up his
sins she was one of those in regard to whom he accounted himself
to have been a sinner. The spirit of intrigue with women, as to
which men will flatter themselves, is customarily so vile, so mean,
so vapid a reflection of a feeling, so aimless, resultless, and
utterly unworthy! Passion exists and has its sway. Vice has its
votaries,--and there is, too, that worn-out longing for vice,
"prurient, yet passionless, cold-studied lewdness," which drags on
a feeble continuance with the aid of money. But the commonest folly
of man in regard to women is a weak taste for intrigue, with little
or nothing on which to feed it;--a worse than feminine aptitude for
male coquetry, which never ascends beyond a desire that somebod