During all this time there were many family meetings.  Those between Mr. Caldigate, the father, and old Mr. Bolton were pleasant enough, though not peculiarly cordial.  The banker, though he had been brought to agree to the marriage had not been quite reconciled to it.  His younger son had been able to convince him that it was his duty to liberate his daughter from the oppression of her mother’s over-vigilance, and all the rest had followed very quickly,—­overwhelming him, as it were, by stern necessity.  When once the girl had come to understand that she could have her own way, if she chose to have a way of her own, she very quickly took the matter into her own management.  And in this way the engagement became a thing settled before the banker had realised the facts of the position.  Though he could not be cordial he endeavoured to be gracious to his old friend.  But Mrs. Bolton spoke words which made all friendship impossible.  She asked old Mr. Caldigate after his soul, and when he replied to her less seriously than she thought becoming, she told him that he was in the bad way.  And then she said things about the marriage which implied that she would sooner see her daughter in her grave than married to a man who was no more than a professing Christian.  The conversation ended in a quarrel, after which the squire would not go again to Puritan Grange.

There was indeed a time, an entire week, during which the mother and daughter hardly spoke to each other.  In these days Mrs. Bolton continually demanded of her husband that he should break off the match, always giving as a reason the alleged fact that John Caldigate was not a true believer.  It had been acknowledged between them that if such were the fact the man would be an unfit husband for their daughter.  But they differed as to the fact.  The son had over and over again declared himself to be a faithful member of the Church of England,—­not very scrupulous perhaps in the performance of her ceremonies,—­but still a believing member.  That his father was not so every one knew, but he was not responsible for his father.  Mr. Bolton seemed to think that the argument was good;—­but Mrs. Bolton was of opinion that to become willingly the daughter-in-law of an infidel, would be to throw oneself with one’s eyes open in the way of perdition.  Hester through all this declared that nothing should now turn her from the man she loved, ’Not though he were an infidel himself?’ said the terror-stricken mother.  ‘Nothing!’ said Hester, bravely.  ‘Of course I should try to change him.’  A more wretched woman than Mrs. Bolton might not probably then have been found.  She suddenly perceived herself to be quite powerless with the child over whom her dominion had hitherto been supreme.  And she felt herself compelled to give way to people whom, with all her heart, she hated.  She determined that nothing,—­nothing should induce her to soften her feelings to this son-in-law who was forced upon her.  The man had come and had stolen