shall not call him pitch. He is my very
own. Mamma, mamma!--recall the word that you have said.'

The woman felt that it had to be recalled in some degree. 'I said
nothing of him, Hester. I call that pitch which I believe to be wrong,
and if I swerve but a hair's-breadth wittingly towards what I believe to
be evil, then I shall be touching pitch and then I shall be defiled. I
did not say that he was pitch. Judge not and ye shall not be judged.'
But if ever judgment was pronounced, and a verdict given, and penalties
awarded, such was done now in regard to John Caldigate.

'But, mamma, why will it be doing evil to be gracious to your daughter's
husband?'

The woman had an answer to this appeal very clearly set forth in her
mind though she was unable to produce it clearly in words. When the
marriage had been first discussed she had opposed it with all her
power, because she had believed the man to be wicked. He was
unregenerate;--and when she had put it to her husband and to the
Nicholases and to the Daniels to see whether such was not the case, they
had not contradicted her. It was acknowledged that he was such a one as
Robert,--a worldly man all round. And then he was worse than Robert,
having been a spendthrift, a gambler, and, if the rumours which had
reached them were true, given to the company of loose women. She had
striven with all her might that such a one should not be allowed to take
her daughter from her, and had striven in vain. He had succeeded;--but
his character was not changed by his success. Did she not know him to be
chaff that must be separated by the wind from the corn and then consumed
in the fire? His character was not altered because that human being whom
she loved the best in all the world had fallen into his power. He was
not the less chaff,--the less likely to be burned. That her daughter
should become chaff also,--ah, there was the agony of it! If instead of
taking the husband and wife together she could even now separate
them,--would it not be her duty to do so? Of all duties would it not be
the first? Let the misery here be what it might, what was that to
eternal misery or to eternal bliss? When therefore she was asked whether
she would be doing evil were she to be gracious to her own son-in-law,
she was quite, quite sure that any such civility would be a sin. The man
was pitch,--though she had been coerced by the exigencies of a worldly
courtesy to deny that she had intended to say so. He