band's
family,--upon the men who had contrived that marriage for her
daughter,--by devoting herself to the care of that daughter and her
nameless grandson, and by letting it be known to all that the misery of
their condition would have been spared had her word prevailed. That they
should live together a stern, dark, but still sympathetic life, secluded
within the high walls of that lonely abode, and that she should thus be
able to prove how right she had been, how wicked and calamitous their
interference with her child,--that had been the scheme of her life. And
now her scheme was knocked on the head, and Hester was to become a
prosperous ordinary married woman amidst the fatness of the land at
Folking! It was all wormwood to her. But still, as she walked, she
acknowledged to herself, that as that old man had said so,--so it must
be. With all her labour, with all her care, and with all her strength,
she had not succeeded in becoming the master of that weak old man.

Chapter LXI

The News Reaches Cambridge

The tidings of John Caldigate's pardon reached Cambridge on the Saturday
morning, and was communicated in various shapes. Official letters from
the Home Office were written to the governor of the jail and to the
sub-sheriff, to Mr. Seely who was still acting as attorney on behalf of
the prisoner, and to Caldigate himself. The latter was longer than the
others, and contained a gracious expression of Her Majesty's regret that
he as an innocent person should have been subjected to imprisonment. The
Secretary of State also was described as being keenly sensible of the
injustice which had been perpetrated by the unfortunate and most unusual
circumstances of the case. As the Home Office had decided that the man
was to be considered innocent, it decided also on the expression of its
opinion without a shadow of remaining doubt. And the news reached
Cambridge in other ways by the same post. William Bolton wrote both to
his father and brother, and Mr. Brown the Under-Secretary sent a private
letter to the old squire at Folking, of which further mention shall be
made. Before church time on the Sunday morning, the fact that John
Caldigate was to be released, or had been released from prison, was
known to all Cambridge.

Caldigate himself had borne his imprisonment on the whole well. He had
complained but little to those around him, and had at once resolved to
endure the slowly passing two years with silent fortitude