‘Oh, mamma, I do so wish you knew him!’ The woman turned her face round, away from her daughter, and assumed that look of hard, determined impregnable obstinacy with which Hester had been well acquainted all her life.  But the young wife had come there with a purpose, not strong perhaps, in actual hope, but resolute even against hope to do her best.  There must be an enduring misery to her unless she could bring her mother into some friendly relation with her husband, and she had calculated that the softness produced by her return would give a better chance for this than she might find at any more protracted time.  But Mrs. Bolton had also made her calculations and had come to her determination.  She turned her head away therefore, and sat quite silent, with the old stubborn look of resolved purpose.

‘Mamma, you will let him come to you now?’

‘No.’

‘Not your own Hester’s husband?’

‘No.’

‘Are we to be divided for ever?’

’Did I not tell you before,—­when you were going?  Shall I lie, and say that I love him?  I will not touch pitch, lest I be defiled.’

’Mamma, he is my husband.  You shall not call him pitch.  He is my very own.  Mamma, mamma!—­recall the word that you have said.’

The woman felt that it had to be recalled in some degree.  ’I said nothing of him, Hester.  I call that pitch which I believe to be wrong, and if I swerve but a hair’s-breadth wittingly towards what I believe to be evil, then I shall be touching pitch and then I shall be defiled.  I did not say that he was pitch.  Judge not and ye shall not be judged.’  But if ever judgment was pronounced, and a verdict given, and penalties awarded, such was done now in regard to John Caldigate.

’But, mamma, why will it be doing evil to be gracious to your daughter’s husband?’

The woman had an answer to this appeal very clearly set forth in her mind though she was unable to produce it clearly in words.  When the marriage had been first discussed she had opposed it with all her power, because she had believed the man to be wicked.  He was unregenerate;—­and when she had put it to her husband and to the Nicholases and to the Daniels to see whether such was not the case, they had not contradicted her.  It was acknowledged that he was such a one as Robert,—­a worldly man all round.  And then he was worse than Robert, having been a spendthrift, a gambler, and, if the rumours which had reached them were true, given to the company of loose women.  She had striven with all her might that such a one should not be allowed to take her daughter from her, and had striven in vain.  He had succeeded;—­but his character was not changed by his success.  Did she not know him to be chaff that must be separated by the wind from the corn and then consumed in the fire?  His character was not altered because that human being whom she loved the best in all the world had fallen into his power.  He was not the less chaff,—­the