On the Monday morning, Mr. William Bolton, the barrister, who had much to his own inconvenience remained at Cambridge for the purpose of carrying out the scheme which he had proposed, went over to Folking in a fly. He had never been at the place before, and was personally less well acquainted with the family into which his sister had married than any other Bolton. Had everything been pleasant, nothing could have been more natural than such a visit; but as things were very far from pleasant Hester was much surprised when he was shown into her room. It had been known to Robert Bolton that Caldigate now came every day into Cambridge to see either his lawyer or his father, and that therefore he would certainly not be found at home about the middle of the day. It was henceforth to be a law with all the Boltons, at any rate till after the trial, that they would not speak to, or if possible see, John Caldigate. Not without very strong cause would William Bolton have entered his house, but that strong cause existed.

‘Oh, William! I am so glad to see you,’ said Hester, rushing into her brother’s arms.

‘I too am glad to see you, Hester, though the time is so sad to us all.’

‘Yes; yes. It is sad;— oh, so sad! Is it not terrible that there should be people so wicked, and that they should be able to cause so much trouble to innocent persons.’

‘With all my heart I feel for you,’ said the brother, caressing his young sister.

With quickest instinct she immediately perceived that a slight emphasis given to the word ‘you’ implied the singular number. She drew herself back a little, still feeling, however, that no offence had as yet been committed against which she could express her indignation. But it was necessary that a protest should be made at once. ‘I am so sorry that my husband is not here to welcome you. He has gone into Cambridge to fetch his father. Poor Mr. Caldigate is so troubled by all this that he prefers now to come and stay with us.’

‘Ah, indeed! I dare say it will be better that the father and the son should be together.’

‘Father and son, or even mother and daughter, are not like husbands and wives, are they?’

‘No; they are not,’ said the barrister, not quite knowing how to answer so very self-evident a proposition but understanding accurately the line of thought which had rendered it necessary for the poor creature to reassert at every moment the bond by which she would fain be bound to the father of her child.

‘But Mr. Caldigate is so good,— so good and gentle to me and baby, that I am delighted that he should be here with John. You know of all this.’

‘Yes, I know, of course.’

‘And will feel all that John has to suffer.’

‘It is very bad, very bad for everybody concerned. By his own showing, his conduct ——’

‘William,’ said she, ‘let this be settled in one word. I will not hear a syllable against my husband from you or any one else. I am delighted to see you,— I cannot tell you how delighted. Oh, if papa would come,— or mamma! Dear, dear mamma! You don’t suppose but what I love you all!’

‘I am sure you do.’

‘But not from papa or mamma even will I hear a word against him. Would Fanny,’— Fanny was the barrister’s wife —‘let her people come and say things behind your back?’

‘I hope not.’

‘Then, believe that I can be as stout as Fanny. But we need not quarrel. You will come and see baby, and have some lunch. I am afraid they will not be here till three or four, but they will be so glad to see you if you will wait.’

He would not wait, of course; but he allowed himself to be taken away to see baby, and did eat his lunch. Then he brought forward the purport of his mission. ‘Your mother is most anxious to see you, Hester. You will go and visit her?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Hester, unaware of any danger. ‘But I wish she would come to me.’

‘My dear girl, as things are at present that is impossible. You can understand as much as that. There must be a trial.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘And till that has been held your mother would be wrong to come here. I express no judgment against any one.’

‘I should have thought mamma would have been the first to support me,— me and baby,’ she said sobbing.

‘Certainly, if you were homeless —’

‘But I am not. My husband gives me a house to live in, and I want none other.’

‘What I wish to explain is that if you were in want of anything —’

‘I am in want of nothing — but sympathy.’

‘You have it from me and from all of us. But pray, listen for a moment. She cannot come to you till the trial be over. I am sure Mr. Caldigate would understand that.’

‘He comes to me,’ she said, alluding to her father-in-law, and not choosing to understand that her brother should have called her husband ‘Mr. Caldigate.’

‘But there can be no reason why you should not go to Chesterton.’

‘Just to see mamma?’

‘For a day or two,’ he replied, blushing inwardly at his own lie. ‘Could you go to-morrow?’

‘Oh no;— not to stay. Of course I must ask my husband. I’m sure he’ll let me go if I ask it, but not to-morrow. Why to-morrow?’

‘Only that your mother longs to see you.’ He had been specially instigated to induce her to come as soon as possible. ‘You may imagine how anxious she is.’

‘Poor mamma! Yes;— I know she suffers. I know mamma’s feelings. Mamma and I must, must, must quarrel if we talk about this. Of course I will go to see her. But will you tell her this,— that if she cannot speak of my husband with affection and respect it will be better that — she should not mention him at all. I will not submit to a word even from her.’

When he took his departure it was settled that she should, with her husband’s permission, go over to Chesterton for a couple of nights in the course of the next week; but that she could not fix the day till she had seen him. Then, when he was taking his departure and kissing her once again, she whispered a word to him. ‘Try and be charitable, William. I sometimes think that at Chesterton we hardly knew what charity meant.’

That evening the proposed visit to Chesterton was discussed at Folking. The old man had very strongly taken up his son’s side, and was of opinion that the Boltons were not only uncharitable, but perversely ill-conditioned in the view which they took. To his thinking, Crinkett, Adamson, and the woman were greedy, fraudulent scoundrels, who had brought forward this charge solely with the view of extorting money. He declared that the very fact that they had begun by asking for money should have barred their evidence before any magistrates. The oaths of the four ‘scoundrels’ were, according to him, worth nothing. The scrap of paper purporting to be a copy of the marriage certificate, and the clergyman’s pretended letter, were mere forgeries, having about them no evidence or probability of truth. Any one could have written them. As to that envelope addressed to Mrs. Caldigate, with the Sydney postmark, he had his own theory. He thought but little of the intercourse which his son acknowledged with the woman, but was of opinion that his son ‘had been an ass’ in writing those words. But a man does not marry a woman by simply writing his own name with the word mistress prefixed to it on an envelope. Any other woman might have adduced the envelope as evidence of his marriage with her! It was, he said, monstrous that any one should give credence to such bundles of lies. Therefore his words were gospel, and his wishes were laws to Hester. She clung round him, and hovered over him, and patted him like a very daughter, insisting that he should nurse the baby, and talking of him to her husband as though he were manifestly the wisest man in Cambridgeshire. She forgot even that little flaw in his religious belief. To her thinking at the present moment, a man who would believe that her baby was the honest son of an honest father and mother had almost religion enough for all purposes.

‘Quite right that you should go,’ said the old man.

‘I think so,’ said the husband, ‘though I am afraid they will trouble her.’

‘The only question is whether they will let her come back.’

‘What!’ exclaimed Hester.

‘Whether they won’t keep you when they’ve got you.’

‘I won’t be kept. I will come back. You don’t suppose I’d let them talk me over?’

‘No, my dear; I don’t think they’ll be able to do that. But there are such things as bolts and bars.’

‘Impossible!’ said his son.

‘Do you mean that they’ll send me to prison?’ asked Hester.

‘No; they can’t do that. They wouldn’t take you in at the county jail, but they might make a prison of Puritan Grange. I don’t say they will, but they might try it.’<............