e elder had been tender; but Camilla
had then been simply a romping girl, hardly more than a year or two
beyond her teens. Now, with her matured charms, Camilla was certainly
the more engaging as far as outward form went. Arabella's cheeks
were thin and long, and her front teeth had come to show themselves.
Her eyes were no doubt still bright, and what she had of hair was
soft and dark. But it was very thin in front, and what there was of
supplemental mass behind,--the bandbox by which Miss Stanbury was
so much aggrieved,--was worn with an indifference to the lines of
beauty, which Mr. Gibson himself found to be very depressing. A man
with a fair burden on his back is not a grievous sight; but when
we see a small human being attached to a bale of goods which he
can hardly manage to move, we feel that the poor fellow has been
cruelly overweighted. Mr. Gibson certainly had that sensation about
Arabella's chignon. And as he regarded it in a nearer and a dearer
light,--as a chignon that might possibly become his own, as a burden
which in one sense he might himself be called upon to bear, as a
domestic utensil which he himself might be called upon to inspect,
and perhaps to aid the shifting on and the shifting off, he did begin
to think that that side of the Scylla gulf ought to be avoided if
possible. And probably this propensity on his part, this feeling that
he would like to reconsider the matter dispassionately before he
gave himself up for good to his old love, may have been increased by
Camilla's apparent withdrawal of her claims. He felt mildly grateful
to the Heavitree household in general for accepting him in this time
of his affliction, but he could not admit to himself that they had a
right to decide upon him in private conclave, and allot him either to
the one or to the other nuptials without consultation with himself.
To be swallowed up by Scylla he now recognised as his doom; but he
thought he ought to be asked on which side of the gulf he would
prefer to go down. The way in which Camilla spoke of him as a thing
that wasn't hers, but another's; and the way in which Arabella looked
at him, as though he were hers and could never be another's, wounded
his manly pride. He had always understood that he might have his
choice, and he could not understand that the little mishap which had
befallen him in the Close was to rob him of that privilege.

He used to drink tea at Heavitree in those days. On one evening on
goin