was pitch to her,
and she declared to herself that were she to touch him she would be
denied. But she knew not in what language to explain all this. 'What you
call graciousness, Hester, is an obligation of which religion knows
nothing,' she said after a pause.

'I don't know why it shouldn't. Are we to be divided, mamma, because of
religion?'

'If you were alone----'

'But I am not alone. Oh, mamma, mamma, do you not know that I am going
to become a mother?'

'My child!'

'And you will not be with me, because you think that you and John differ
as to religious forms.'

'Forms!' she said. 'Forms! Is the spirit there? By their fruits ye shall
know them. I ask you yourself whether his life as you have seen it is
such as I should think conformable with the Word of God?'

'Whose life is so?'

'But an effort may be made. Do not let us palter with each other,
Hester! There are the sheep,--and there are the goats! Of which is he?
According to the teaching of your early years, in which flock would he
be found if account were taken now?'

There was something so terrible in this that the young wife who was thus
called upon to denounce her husband separated herself by some steps from
her mother, retreating back to a chair in which she seated herself. 'Do
you remember, mamma, the words you said just now? Judge not and ye shall
not be judged.'

'Nor do I judge.'

'And how does it go on? Forgive and ye shall be forgiven.'

'Neither do I judge, nor can I forgive.' This she said, putting all her
emphasis on the pronoun, and thereby declaring her own humility. 'But
the great truths of my religion are dear to me. I will not trust myself
in the way of sinners, because by some worldly alliance to which I
myself was no consenting party, I have been brought into worldly contact
with them. I at any rate will be firm. I say to you now no more than I
said, ah, so many times, when it was still possible that my words should
not be vain. They were vain. But not on that account am I to be
changed. I will not be wound like a skein of silk round your little
finger.' That was it. Was she to give way in everything because they had
been successful among them in carrying out this marriage in opposition
to her judgment? Was she to assent that this man be treated as a sheep
because he had prevailed against her, while she was so well aware that
he would still have been a goat to them all had he not prevailed? She at
any rate was sincere. She