'Think where you might have been now!'

'I am sure I should have found out his character in time and have broken
from him, let it have cost what it might. A man that can do such things
as that is to me quite horrible. What is to become of her, and her
baby;--and, perhaps, two,' she added in a whisper, holding up her hands
and shaking her head. The ceremony through which she had just passed had
given her courage to hint at such a possibility. 'I suppose she'll have
to be called Miss Bolton again.' Of course there was some well-founded
triumph in the bosom of the undoubted Mrs. Augustus Smirkie as she
remembered what her own fate might have been. Then she was carried away
in the family carriage amidst a deluge of rice and a shower of old
shoes.

That same night Mr. Bromley gave an account of the wedding to John
Caldigate at Folking, telling him how well all the personages had
performed their parts. 'Poor Julia! she at any rate will be safe.'

'Safe enough, I should think,' said the clergyman.

'What I mean is that she has no dangers to fear such as my poor wife has
encountered. Whomever I think of now I cannot but compare them to
ourselves. No woman surely was ever so ill-used as she, and no man ever
so unfortunate as myself.'

'It will be all over in August.'

'And where shall I be? My own lawyer tells me that it is too probable
that I shall be in prison. And where will she be then?'

Chapter XXXIII

Persuasion

Early on the Tuesday morning Hester came down into the breakfast parlour
at Puritan Grange, having with difficulty persuaded herself that she
would stay the appointed hours in her mother's house. On the previous
evening her mother had, she thought, been very hard on her, and she had
determined to go. She would not stay even with her mother, if her mother
insisted upon telling her that she was not her husband's wife. But
during the night she was able to persuade herself to bear what had been
already said,--to let it be as though it had been forgotten. Her mother
was her mother. But she would bear no more. As to herself and her own
conduct her parents might say what they pleased to her. But of her
husband she would endure to hear no evil word spoken. In this spirit she
came down into the little parlour.

Mrs. Bolton was also up,--had been up and about for some time previous.
She was a woman who never gave way to temptations of ease. A nasty dark
morning at six o'clock, with just light enough