While all this was going on, as the general opinion in favour of Caldigate was becoming stronger every day, when even Judge Bramber had begun to doubt, the feeling which had always prevailed at Puritan Grange was growing in intensity and converting itself from a conviction into a passion. That the wicked bigamist had falsely and fraudulently robbed her of her daughter was a religion to Mrs. Bolton;— and, as the matter had proceeded, the old banker had become ever more and more submissive to his wife’s feelings. All the Cambridge Boltons were in accord on this subject,— who had never before been in accord on any subject. Robert Bolton, who understood thoroughly each point as it was raised on behalf of Caldigate, was quite sure that the old squire was spending his money freely, his own money and his son’s, with the view of getting the verdict set aside. What was so clear as that Dick Shand and Bagwax, and probably also Smithers from the Stamps and Taxes, were all in the pay of old Caldigate? At this time the defection of Adamson was not known to him, but he did know that a strong case was being made with the Secretary of State. ‘If it costs me all I have in the world I will expose them,’ he said up in London to his brother William, the London barrister.

The barrister was not quite in accord with the other Boltons. He also had been disposed to think that Dick Shand and Bagwax might have been bribed by the squire. It was at any rate possible. And the twenty thousand pounds paid to the accusing witnesses had always stuck in his throat when he had endeavoured to believe that Caldigate might be innocent. It seemed to him still that the balance of evidence was against the man who had taken his sister away from her home. But he was willing to leave that to the Secretary of State and to the judge. He did not see why his sister should not have her husband and be restored to the world,— if Judge Bramber should at last decide that so it ought to be. No money could bribe Judge Bramber. No undue persuasion could weaken him. If that Rhadamanthus should at last say that the verdict had been a wrong verdict, then,— for pity’s sake, for love’s sake, in the name of humanity, and for the sake of all Boltons present and to come,— let the man be considered innocent.

But Robert Bolton was more intent on his purpose, and was a man of stronger passion. Perhaps some real religious scruple told him that a woman should not live with a man who was not her true husband,— let any judge say what he might. But hatred, probably had more to do with it than religion. It was he who had first favoured Caldigate’s claim on Hester’s hand, and he who had been most grievously deceived. From the moment in which the conviction had come upon him that Caldigate had even promised his hand in marriage to Euphemia Smith, he had become Caldigate’s enemy,— his bitter enemy; and now he could not endure the thought that he should be called upon again to receive Caldigate as his brother-in-law Caldigate’s guilt was an idea fixed in his mind which no Secretary of State, no Judge Bramber, no brother could expel.

And so it came to pass that there were hard words between him and his brother. ‘You are wrong,’ said William.

‘How wrong? You cannot say that you believe him to be innocent.’

‘If he receives the Queen’s pardon he is to be considered as innocent.’

‘Even though you should know him to have been guilty?’

‘Well,— yes,’ said William, slowly, and perhaps indiscreetly. ‘It is a matter in which a man’s guilt or innocence must be held to depend upon what persons in due authority have declared. As he is now guilty of bigamy in consequence of the verdict, even though he should never have committed the offence, so should he be presumed to be innocent, when that verdict has been set aside by the Queen’s pardon on the advice of her proper officers,— even though he committed the offence.’

‘You would have your sister live with a man who has another wife alive? It comes to that.’

‘For all legal purposes he would have no other wife alive.’

‘The children would be illegitimate.’

‘There you are decidedly wrong,’ said the barrister. ‘The children would be legitimate. Even at this moment, without any pardon, the child could claim and would enter in upon his inheritance.’

‘The next of kin would claim,’ said the attorney.

‘The burden of proving the former marriage would then be on him,’ said the barrister.

‘The verdict would be evidence,’ said the attorney.

‘Certainly,’ said the barrister; ‘but such evidence would not be worth a straw after a Queen’s pardon, given on the advice of the judge who had tried the former case. As yet we know not what the judge may say,— we do not know the facts as they have been expounded to him. But if Caldigate be regarded as innocent by the world at large, it will be our duty so to regard him.’

‘I will never look on him as Hester’s husband,’ said the attorney.

‘I and Fanny have already made up our minds that we would at once ask them to come to us for a month,’ said the barrister.

‘Nothing on earth will induce me to speak to him,’ said the attorney.

‘Then you will be very cruel to Hester,’ said the barrister.

‘It is dreadful to me,’ said the attorney, ‘that you should care so little for your sister’s reputation.’ And so they quarrelled. Robert, leaving the house in great dudgeon, went down on the following morning to Cambridge.

At Puritan Grange the matter was argued rather by rules of religion than of law; but as the rules of law were made by those interested to fit themselves to expediency, so were the rules of religion fitted to prejudice. No hatred could be more bitter than that which Mrs. Bolton felt for the man whom she would permit no one to call her son-in-law. Something as to the postage-stamp and the postmarks was told her; but with a woman’s indomitable obstinacy she closed her mind against all that,— as indeed did also the banker. ‘Is her position in the world to depend upon a postage-stamp?’ said the banker, intending to support his wife. Then she arose in her wrath, and was very eloquent. ‘Her position in the world!’ she said. ‘What does it matter? It is her soul! Though all men and all women should call her a castaway, it would be nothing if the Lord knew her to be guiltless. But she will be living as an adulteress with an adulterer. The law has told her that it is so. She will feel every day and every night that she is a transgressor, and will vainly seek consolation by telling herself that men have pardoned that which God has condemned.’ And again she broke forth. ‘The Queen’s pardon! What right has the Queen to pardon an adulterer who has crept into the bosom of a family and destroyed all that he found there? What sense of justice can any Queen have in her bosom who will send such a one back, to heap sin upon sin, to fasten the bonds of iniquity on the soul of my child?’ Postage-stamps and postmarks and an old envelope! The triviality of the things as compared with the importance of everlasting life made her feel that they were unworthy to be even noticed. It did not occur to her that the presence of a bodkin might be ample evidence of murder. Post-marks indeed,— when her daughter’s everlasting life was the matter in question! Then they told her of Dick Shand. She, too, had heard of Dick Shand. He had been a gambler. So she said,— without much truth. He was known for a drunkard, a spendthrift, a penniless idle ne’er-do-well who had wandered back home without clothes to his back;— which was certainly untrue, as the yellow trousers had been bought at San Francisco;— and now she was told that the hated miscreant was to be released from prison because such a one as this was ready to take an oath! She had a knack of looking on such men,— ne’er-do-wells like Dick Shand and Caldigate,— as human beings who had, as it were, lost their souls before death, so that it was useless to think of them otherwise than as already damned. That Caldigate should become a good, honest, loving husband, or Dick Shand a truth-speaking witness, was to her thinking much more improbable than that a camel should go through the eye of ............