brought round to acknowledge that his convictions
had been wrong. But there was still much that stuck in his throat. 'Why
did John Caldigate pay twenty thousand pounds to those persons when he
knew that they had hatched a conspiracy against himself?' This question
he asked his brother William over and over again, and never could be
satisfied with any answer which his brother could give him.

Once he asked the question of Caldigate himself. 'Because I felt that,
in honour, I owed it to them,' said Caldigate; 'and, perhaps, a little
too because I felt that, if they took themselves off at once, your
sister might be spared something of the pain which she has suffered.'
But still it was unintelligible to Robert Bolton that any man in his
senses should give away so large a sum of money with so slight a
prospect of any substantial return.

Hester often goes to see her mother, but Mrs. Bolton has never been at
Folking, and probably never will again visit that house. She is a woman
whose heart is not capable of many changes, and who cannot readily give
herself to new affections. But having once owned that John Caldigate is
her daughter's husband, she now alleges no further doubt on the matter.
She writes the words 'Mrs. John Caldigate' without a struggle, and does
take delight in her daughter's visits.

When last I heard from Folking, Mrs. John Caldigate's second boy had
just been born.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHN CALDIGATE***

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