She went, and the field was once more open to the amorous Vicar of St. Peter’s-cum-Pumpkin.  It is astonishing how the greatest difficulties will sink away, and become as it were nothing, when they are encountered face to face.  It is certain that Mr Gibson’s position had been one most trying to the nerves.  He had speculated on various modes of escape; a curacy in the north of England would be welcome, or the duties of a missionary in New Zealand, or death.  To tell the truth, he had, during the last week or two, contemplated even a return to the dominion of Camilla.  That there should ever again be things pleasant for him in Exeter seemed to be quite impossible.  And yet, on the evening of the day but one after the departure of Camilla, he was seated almost comfortably with his own Arabella!  There is nothing that a man may not do, nothing that he may not achieve, if he have only pluck enough to go through with it.

‘You do love me?’ Bella said to him.  It was natural that she should ask him; but it would have been better perhaps if she had held her tongue.  Had she spoken to him about his house, or his income, or the servants, or the duties of his parish church, it would have been easier for him to make a comfortable reply.

‘Yes I love you,’ he replied; ’of course I love you.  We have always been 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.