t not to-morrow. Why to-morrow?'

'Only that your mother longs to see you.' He had been specially
instigated to induce her to come as soon as possible. 'You may imagine
how anxious she is.'

'Poor mamma! Yes;--I know she suffers. I know mamma's feelings. Mamma
and I must, must, must quarrel if we talk about this. Of course I will
go to see her. But will you tell her this,--that if she cannot speak of
my husband with affection and respect it will be better that--she should
not mention him at all. I will not submit to a word even from her.'

When he took his departure it was settled that she should, with her
husband's permission, go over to Chesterton for a couple of nights in
the course of the next week; but that she could not fix the day till she
had seen him. Then, when he was taking his departure and kissing her
once again, she whispered a word to him. 'Try and be charitable,
William. I sometimes think that at Chesterton we hardly knew what
charity meant.'

That evening the proposed visit to Chesterton was discussed at Folking.
The old man had very strongly taken up his son's side, and was of
opinion that the Boltons were not only uncharitable, but perversely
ill-conditioned in the view which they took. To his thinking, Crinkett,
Adamson, and the woman were greedy, fraudulent scoundrels, who had
brought forward this charge solely with the view of extorting money. He
declared that the very fact that they had begun by asking for money
should have barred their evidence before any magistrates. The oaths of
the four 'scoundrels' were, according to him, worth nothing. The scrap
of paper purporting to be a copy of the marriage certificate, and the
clergyman's pretended letter, were mere forgeries, having about them no
evidence or probability of truth. Any one could have written them. As to
that envelope addressed to Mrs. Caldigate, with the Sydney postmark, he
had his own theory. He thought but little of the intercourse which his
son acknowledged with the woman, but was of opinion that his son 'had
been an ass' in writing those words. But a man does not marry a woman by
simply writing his own name with the word mistress prefixed to it on an
envelope. Any other woman might have adduced the envelope as evidence of
his marriage with her! It was, he said, monstrous that any one should
give credence to such bundles of lies. Therefore his words were gospel,
and his wishes were laws to Hester. She clung round him, and hovered
o