"Because you do not—come to me." Camilla, as she spoke, laid her head upon his shoulder, and wept. "And now you have been five minutes with me and nearly an hour with Bella."
"She wanted me to read to her," said Mr. Gibson;—and he hated himself thoroughly as he said it.
"And now you want to get away as fast as you can," continued Camilla.
"Because of the morning service," said Mr. Gibson. This was quite true, and yet he hated himself again for saying it. As Camilla knew the truth of the last plea, she was obliged to let him go; but she made him swear before he went that he loved her dearly. "I think it's all right," she said to herself as he went down the stairs. "I don't think he'd dare make it wrong. If he does;—o-oh!"
Mr. Gibson, as he walked into Exeter, endeavoured to justify his own conduct to himself. There was no moment, he declared to himself, in which he had not endeavoured to do right. Seeing the manner in which he had been placed among these two young women, both of whom had fallen in love with him, how could he have saved himself from vacillation? And by what untoward chance had it come to pass that he had now learned to dislike so vigorously, almost to hate, the one with whom he had been for a moment sufficiently infatuated to think that he loved?
But with all his arguments he did not succeed in justifying to himself his own conduct, and he hated himself.
CHAPTER LXVI.
OF A QUARTER OF LAMB.
Miss Stanbury, looking out of her parlour window, saw Mr. Gibson hurrying towards the cathedral, down the passage which leads from Southernhay into the Close. "He's just come from Heavitree, I'll be bound," said Miss Stanbury to Martha, who was behind her.