g.'

'So is a marriage human.'

'I beg your pardon, sir;--a marriage is divine.'

'Not if it isn't a marriage. Your marriage in our church wouldn't have
been divine if you'd had another wife alive.'

'Papa, I wish you wouldn't.'

'But I shall. I've got to hammer it into his head somehow.'

Mr. Smirkie drew himself up and grinned bravely. But the squire did not
care for his frowns. That last backhander at the claret-jug had
determined him. 'John Caldigate's marriage with his wife was not in the
least interfered with by the verdict.'

'It took away the lady's name from her at once,' said the indignant
clergyman.

'That's just what it didn't do,' said the squire, rising from his
chair;--'of itself it didn't affect her name at all. And now that it is
shown to have been a mistaken verdict, it doesn't affect her position.
The long and the short of it is this, that anybody who doesn't like to
meet him and his wife as honoured guests in my house had better stay
away. Do you hear that, Julia?' Then without waiting for an answer he
walked out before them all into the drawing-room and not another word
was said that night about the matter. Mr. Smirkie, indeed, did not utter
a word on any subject, till at an early hour he wished them all
good-night with dignified composure.

Chapter LIX

How The Big-Wigs Doubted

It's what I call an awful shame.' Mr. Holt and parson Bromley were
standing together on the causeway at Folking, and the former was
speaking. The subject under discussion was, of course, the continued
detention of John Caldigate in the county prison.

'I cannot at all understand it,' said Mr. Bromley.

'There's no understanding nothing about it, sir. Every man, woman, and
child in the county knows as there wasn't no other marriage, and yet
they won't let 'un out. It's sheer spite, because he wouldn't vote for
their man last 'lection.'

'I hardly think that, Mr. Holt.'

'I'm as sure of it as I stands here,' said Mr. Holt, slapping his thigh.
'What else 'd they keep 'un in for? It's just like their ways.'

Mr. Holt was one of a rare class, being a liberal farmer,--a Liberal,
that is, in politics; as was also Mr. Bromley, a Liberal among
parsons,--_rava avis._ The Caldigates had always been Liberal, and Mr.
Holt had been brought up to agree with his landlord. He was now beyond
measure acerbated, because John Caldigate had not been as yet declared
innocent on evidence which was altogether conclusi