Was she to assent that this man be treated as a sheep because he had prevailed against her, while she was so well aware that he would still have been a goat to them all had he not prevailed?  She at any rate was sincere.  She was consistent.  She would be true to her principles even at the expense of all her natural yearnings.  Of what use to her would be her religious convictions if she were to give them up just because her heart-strings were torn and agonised?  The man was a goat though he were ten times told her child’s husband.  So she looked again away into the garden and resolved that she would not yield in a single point.

‘Good-bye, mamma,’ said Hester, rising from her chair, and coming up to her mother.

‘Good-bye, Hester.  God bless you, my child!’

‘You will not come to me to Folking?’

‘No.  I will not go to Folking.’

‘I may come to you here?’

‘Oh yes;—­as often as you will, and for as long as you will.’

‘I cannot stay away from home without him, you know,’ said the young wife.

‘As often as you will, and for as long as you will,’ the mother said again, repeating the words with emphasis.  ’Would I could have you here as I used to do, so as to look after every want and administer to every wish.  My fingers shall work for your baby, and my prayers shall be said for him and for you, morning and night.  I am not changed, Hester.  I am still and ever shall be, while I am spared, your own loving mother.’  So they parted, and Hester was driven back to Folking.

In forming our opinion as to others we are daily brought into difficulty by doubting how much we should allow to their convictions, and how far we are justified in condemning those who do not accede to our own.  Mrs. Bolton believed every word that she said.  There was no touch of hypocrisy about her.  Could she without sting of conscience have gone off to Folking and ate of her son-in-law’s bread and drank of his cup, and sat in his presence, no mother living would have enjoyed more thoroughly the delight of waiting upon and caressing and bending over her child.  She denied herself all this with an agony of spirit, groaning not only over their earthly separation, thinking not only of her daughter’s present dangers, but tormented also by reflections as to dangers and possible separations in another world.  But she knew she was right.  She knew at least that were she to act otherwise there would be upon her conscience the weight of sin.  She did not know that the convictions on which she rested with such confidence had come in truth from her injured pride,—­had settled themselves in her mind because she had been beaten in her endeavours to prevent her daughter’s marriage.  She was not aware that she regarded John Caldigate as a goat,—­as one who beyond all doubt was a goat,—­simply because John Caldigate had had his way, while she had been debarred from hers.  Such no doubt was the case.  And