Julia is capable of feeling sorrow over Carolyn's death, but she nonetheless has betrayed Barnabas to the Sheriff, who now, I assume, is playing the part that Edward Collins played in 1897: he is assuming that all of the evil of the past 25 years is due to the presence of the vampire. And I imagine that Julia has told the Sheriff that she is in Barnabas's power, but that somehow he - the Sheriff - by virtue of being pure of heart was able to free her from Barnabas's power. Or something.
When the Sheriff said, in frustration, that he wasn't a witchhunter, I suddenly imagined 1795 Trask in 1995 Collinwood. Whom would Trask accuse of being the witch? There are no lovely young girls - live ones, I mean - to attract his attention.
Gerard's quite a mystery at this point. We don't know why he has taken over Collinwood. When Quentin's ghost was haunting Collinwood, we knew right from the start that he was a Collins. I think Elizabeth gave a short and incorrect biography of Quentin at the beginning of that haunting. And since he was a Collins, we could imagine that he had something against the Collins family, because there are always strong emotions within families. But we are not given any indication that Gerard is a Collins. So what's he doing at Collinwood? Just enjoying being evil, I guess, but why Collinwood?
Gerard let Carolyn live for 25 years, and only killed her when she became a threat to him, so he doesn't have anything against the Collins family in general. He just wants Collinwood. He didn't immediately resort to having Julia betray Barnabas, but instead had her encourage him to leave, and something she said today indicated to me that she understood that she would not stay with Gerard, but rather that she would leave with Barnabas. He had Julia tell the Sheriff on Barnabas only after he learned that Barnabas was determined to conduct an exorcism. So he's not being evil for the sake of being evil; he's just making sure that nobody gets in his way. He's got Daphne sufficiently under his power, and Carrie did what he wanted. It seems reasonable to suppose that Tad would obey him as well. Gerard has his own little kingdom, and that, apparently, is all he wants. It looks like a pretty dreary little kingdom to me, but I guess he would respond that my beloved little house looked like a pretty dreary little house to him. I wish to state for the record, however, that no vampires have been destroyed in the preserving of my house.
