not even yet allow themselves to be
convinced. For his wife's happiness their conversion was of infinitely
more importance than that of all the outside world beyond. When the
gloom of the evening had come, she too came out and walked with him
about the garden and grounds with the professed object of showing him
whatever little changes might have been made. But the conversation soon
fell back upon the last great incident of their joint lives.

'But your mother cannot refuse to believe what everybody now declares to
be true,' he argued.

'Mamma is so strong in her feelings.'

'She must know they would not have let me out of prison in opposition to
the verdict until they were very sure of what they were doing.'

Then she told him all that had occurred between her and her mother since
the trial,--how her mother had come out to Folking and had implored her
to return to Chesterton, and had then taken herself away in dudgeon
because she had not prevailed. 'But nothing would have made me leave the
place,' she said, 'after what they tried to do when I was there before.
Except to go to church, I have not once been outside the gate.'

'Your brothers will come round, I suppose. Robert has been very angry
with me, I know. But he is a man of the world and a man of sense.'

'We must take it as it will come, John. Of course it would be very much
to me to have my father and mother restored to me. It would be very much
to know that my brothers were again my friends. But when I remember how
I prayed yesterday but for one thing, and that now, to-day, that one
thing has come to me;--how I have got that which, when I waked this
morning, seemed to me to be all the world to me, the want of which made
my heart so sick that even my baby could not make me glad, I feel that
nothing ought now to make me unhappy. I have got you, John, and
everything else is nothing.' As he stooped in the dark to kiss her again
among the rose-bushes, he felt that it was almost worth his while to
have been in prison.

After dinner there came a message to them across the ferry from Mr.
Holt. Would they be so good as to walk down to the edge of the great
dike, opposite to Twopenny Farm, at nine o'clock? As a part of the
message, Mr. Holt sent word that at that hour the moon would be rising.
Of course they went down to the dike,--Mr. Caldigate, John Caldigate,
and Hester there, outside Mr. Holt's farmyard, just far enough to avoid
danger to the hay-ricks and corn-