own the truth. Caldigate might well declare
that Richard Shand's presence was essential to his defence. There would
and must be delay.

But what, in the meantime, would be the condition of Hester,--Hester
Bolton, as they feared that they would be bound in duty to call
her,--of Hester and her infant? The thing was so full of real
tragedy,--true human nature of them all was so strongly affected, that
for a time family jealousies and hatred had to give way. To father and
mother and to the brothers, and to the brother's wife, it was equally
a catastrophe, terrible, limitless, like an earthquake, or the falling
upon them of some ruined tower. One thing was clear to them all,--that
she and her child must be taken away from Folking. Her continued
residence there would be a continuation of the horror. The man was not
her husband. Not one of them was inspired by a feeling of mercy to
allege that, in spite of all that they had heard, he still might be her
husband. Even Mrs. Robert, who had been most in favour of the Caldigate
marriage, did not doubt for an instant. The man had been a gambler at
home on racecourses, and then had become a gambler at the gold-mines in
the colony. His life then, by his own admission, had been disreputable.
Who does not know that vices which may be treated with tenderness,
almost with complaisance, while they are kept in the background, became
monstrous, prodigious, awe-inspiring when they are made public? A
gentleman shall casually let slip some profane word, and even some
friendly parson standing by will think but little of it; but let the
profane word, through some unfortunate accident, find its way into the
newspapers, and the gentleman will be held to have disgraced himself
almost for ever. Had nothing been said of a marriage between Caldigate
and Mrs. Smith, little would have been thought by Robert Bolton, little
perhaps by Robert Bolton's father, little even by Robert Bolton's wife,
of the unfortunate alliance which he had admitted. But now, everything
was added to make a pile of wickedness as big as a mountain.

From the conclave which was held on Saturday at Puritan Grange to decide
what should be done, it was impossible to exclude Mrs. Bolton. She was
the young mother's mother, and how should she be excluded? From the
first moment in which something of the truth had reached her ears, it
had become impossible to silence her or to exclude her. To her all those
former faults would have been bl