hemselves to expediency, so were the rules of religion fitted to
prejudice. No hatred could be more bitter than that which Mrs. Bolton
felt for the man whom she would permit no one to call her son-in-law.
Something as to the postage-stamp and the postmarks was told her; but
with a woman's indomitable obstinacy she closed her mind against all
that,--as indeed did also the banker. 'Is her position in the world to
depend upon a postage-stamp?' said the banker, intending to support his
wife. Then she arose in her wrath, and was very eloquent. 'Her position
in the world!' she said. 'What does it matter? It is her soul! Though
all men and all women should call her a castaway, it would be nothing if
the Lord knew her to be guiltless. But she will be living as an
adulteress with an adulterer. The law has told her that it is so. She
will feel every day and every night that she is a transgressor, and will
vainly seek consolation by telling herself that men have pardoned that
which God has condemned.' And again she broke forth. 'The Queen's
pardon! What right has the Queen to pardon an adulterer who has crept
into the bosom of a family and destroyed all that he found there? What
sense of justice can any Queen have in her bosom who will send such a
one back, to heap sin upon sin, to fasten the bonds of iniquity on the
soul of my child?' Postage-stamps and postmarks and an old envelope! The
triviality of the things as compared with the importance of everlasting
life made her feel that they were unworthy to be even noticed. It did
not occur to her that the presence of a bodkin might be ample evidence
of murder. Post-marks indeed,--when her daughter's everlasting life was
the matter in question! Then they told her of Dick Shand. She, too, had
heard of Dick Shand. He had been a gambler. So she said,--without much
truth. He was known for a drunkard, a spendthrift, a penniless idle
ne'er-do-well who had wandered back home without clothes to his
back;--which was certainly untrue, as the yellow trousers had been
bought at San Francisco;--and now she was told that the hated miscreant
was to be released from prison because such a one as this was ready to
take an oath! She had a knack of looking on such men,--ne'er-do-wells
like Dick Shand and Caldigate,--as human beings who had, as it were,
lost their souls before death, so that it was useless to think of them
otherwise than as already damned. That Caldigate should become a good,
honest, lovin