’I suppose you will let them bring me food here.  You would not wish him to be starved.’

‘Hester!’

‘Well; what would you have me say?  Are you not my jailer?’

’I am your mother.  According to my conscience I am acting for you as best I know how.  Do you not know that I mean to be good to you?’

’I know you are not good to me.  Nobody can be good who tries to separate me from my husband.  I shall remain here till he comes and tells me how I am to be taken away.’  Then Mr. Bolton returned, and made his way into the house with the assistance of the gardener through the kitchen.  He found the two women sitting in the hall, each in the high-backed arm-chair, and his daughter with her baby in her arms,—­a most piteous sight, the two of them thus together.  ‘Papa,’ she said, as he came up into the hall from the kitchen, ’you are treating me badly, cruelly, unjustly.  You have no right to keep me here against my will.  I am my husband’s wife, and I must go to my husband.’

‘It is for the best, Hester.’

’What is wrong cannot be for the best.  Do you suppose that he will let me be kept here in prison?  Of course he will come.  Why do you not let me go?’

‘It is right that you should be here, Hester,’ he said, as he passed up-stairs to his own bedroom.  It was a terrible job of work for which he had no strength whatever himself, and as to which he was beginning to doubt whether even his wife’s strength would suffice.  As for her, as for Hester, perhaps it would be well that she should be wearied and broken into submission.  But it was fearful to think that his wife should have to sit there the whole day saying nothing, doing nothing, merely watching lest her daughter should attempt to escape through some window.

‘It will kill your father, I think,’ said the mother.

’Why does he not let me go then?  I have to think of my husband and my child.’  Then again there was silence.  When they had been seated thus for two hours, all the words that had been spoken between them had not spread themselves over ten minutes, and Mrs. Bolton was looking forward to hour after hour of the same kind.  It did not seem to her to be possible that Hester should be forced up into her own room.  Even she, with all her hardihood, could not ask the men about the place to take her in their arms and carry her with violence up the stairs.  Nor would the men have done it, if so required.  Nothing but a policeman’s garb will seem to justify the laying of a hand upon a woman, and even that will hardly do it unless the woman be odiously disreputable.  Mrs. Bolton saw clearly what was before her.  Should Hester be strong in her purpose to remain seated as at present, she also must remain seated.  Weariness and solicitude for her baby might perhaps drive the young mother to bed.  Then she also would go to her bed,—­and would rest, with one eye ever open, with her ears always on the alert.  She was somewhat sure of herself.  Her life had not been so soft but that she could endure much,—­and of her purpose she was quite sure.  Nothing would trouble her conscience if she could succeed in keeping her daughter separated from John Caldigate.