the wretched story would be told through all
Cambridgeshire. Nothing could prevent that now. 'Darvell,' he said, as
he turned towards the hall steps, 'you must see these men off the
premises. The less you say to them the better.'

'We'll only just tell him all about it as we goes along comfortable,'
said Adamson. Darvell, who was a good sort of man in his way,--slow
rather than stupid, weighted with the ordinary respect which a servant
has for his master,--had heard it all, but showed no particular anxiety
to hear more. He accompanied the men down to the Causeway, hardly
opening his mouth to them, while they were loud in denouncing the
meanness of the man who had deserted a wife in Australia, and had then
betrayed a young lady here in England.

'What were they talking about?' said his wife to him when they were
alone. 'I heard their voices even here.'

'They were threatening me;--threatening me and you.'

'About that woman?'

'Yes; about that woman. Not that they have dared yet to mention her
name,--but it was about that woman.'

'And she?'

'I've heard nothing from her since that letter. I do not know that she
is in England, but I suppose that she is with them.'

'Does it make you unhappy, John?'

'Very unhappy.'

'Does it frighten you?'

'Yes. It makes me fear that you for a while will be made miserable,--you
whom I had thought that I could protect from all sorrow and from all
care! O my darling! of course it frightens me; but it is for you.'

'What will they do first, John?'

'They have already said words before the man there which will of course
be spread about the country.'

'What words?'

Then he paused, but after pausing he spoke very plainly. 'They said that
you were not my wife.'

'But I am.'

'Indeed you are.'

'Tell me all truly. Though I were not, I would still be true to you.'

'But, Hester,--Hester, you are. Do not speak as though that were
possible.'

'I know that you love me. I am sure of that. Nothing should ever make me
leave you;--nothing. You are all the world to me now. Whatever you may
have done I will be true to you. Only tell me everything.'

'I think I have,' he said, hoarsely. Then he remembered that he had told
much to Robert Bolton which she had not heard. 'I did tell her that I
would marry her.'

'You did.'

'Yes, I did.'

'Is not that a marriage in some countries?'

'I think nowhere,--certainly not there. And the people, hearing of it
all, used to call he