’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.’

‘I should get out, of course.’

‘I daresay you would; but there might be trouble.’

‘Papa would not allow that,’ said Hester.  ’Papa understands better than that.  I’ve a right to go where I like, just as anybody else;—­that is, if John tells me.’  The matter was discussed at some length, but John Caldigate was of opinion that no such attempt as the old man had suggested was probable,—­or even possible.  The idea that in these days any one should be kept a prisoner in a private house,—­any one over whom no one in that house possessed legitimate authority,—­seemed to him to be monstrous.  That a husband should lock up his wife might be possible, or a father his unmarried and dependent daughter; but that any one should venture to lock up another man’s wife was, he declared, out of the question.  Mr. Caldigate again said that he should not be surprised if it were attempted; but acknowledged that the attempt could hardly be successful.

As Hester was anxious to make the visit, it was arranged that she should go.  It was not that she expected much pleasure even in seeing her mother;—­but that it was expedient at such a time to maintain what fellowship might still be possible with her own family.  The trial would of course liberate them from all their trouble; and then, when the trial should be over, it would be very sad if an entire rupture between herself and her parents should have been created.  She would be true to her husband; as true as a part must be to the whole, as the heart must to the brain.  They two were, and ever would be, one.  But if her mother could be spared to her, if she could be saved from a lasting quarrel with her mother, it would be so much to her!  Tears came into the eyes even of the old man as he assented; and her husband swore to her that for her sake he would forgive every injury from any one bearing the name of Bolton when all this should be over.

A day was therefore fixed, and a note was written, and on the last day of February she and her baby and her nurse were taken over to Puritan Grange.  In the meantime telegrams at a very great cost had been flying backwards and forwards between Cambridge and Sydney.  William and Robert Bolton had determined among them that, at whatever expense to the family, the truth must be ascertained; and to this the old banker had assented.  So far they were right, no doubt.  If the daughter and sister was not in truth a wife,—­if by grossest, by most cruel ill-usage she had been lured to a ruin for which there could be no remedy in this world,—­it would be better that the fact should be known at once, so that her life might be pure though it could never again be bright.  But it was strange that, with all these Boltons, there was a desire, an anxiety, to prove the man’s guilt rather than his innocence.