rs generally. And then
with regard to the Caldigates generally,--the elder of whom she knew to
have been one of her husband's intimate friends in his less regenerated
days,--she believed them to be infidel freethinkers. She was not,
therefore, by any means predisposed in favour of this young man; and
when he spoke of his desire to be explicit, she thought that he had
better be explicit anywhere rather than in her drawing-room. 'You may
remember,' he said, 'that I had the pleasure of meeting your daughter
here before I left the country five years ago.' Then she listened with
all her ears. There were not many things in this empty, vain, hard
unattractive world which excited her. But the one thing in regard to
which she had hopes and fears, doubts and resolutions,--the one matter
as to which she knew that she must ever be on her guard, and yet as to
which she hardly knew how she was to exercise her care,--was her child.
'And once I have seen her since I have been back, though only for a
moment.' Then he paused as though expecting that she should say
something;--but what was it possible that she should say? She only
looked at him with all her eyes, and retreated a little from him with
her body, as anxious to get away from a man of his class who should dare
even to speak to her of her girl. 'The truth is, Mrs. Bolton, that her
image has been present to me through all my wanderings, and I am here to
ask her to be my wife.' She rose from her chair as though to fly from
him,--and then sitting down again stared at him with her mouth open and
her eyes fixed upon him. His wife! Her Hester to become the wife of such
a one as that! Her girl, as to whom, when thinking of the future life of
her darling, she had come to tell herself that there could be no man
good enough, pure enough, true enough, firm enough in his faith and
life, to have so tender, so inestimable a treasure committed to his
charge!

Chapter XVIII

Robert Bolton

Caldigate felt at the moment that he had been very abrupt,--so abrupt as
to have caused infinite dismay. But then it had been necessary that he
should be abrupt in order that he might get the matter understood. The
ordinary approaches were not open to him, and unless he had taken a
more than usually rapid advantage of the occasion which he had made for
himself, he would have had to leave the house without having been able
to give any of its inmates the least idea of his purpose. And then,--as
he