said the mother.

'Why does he not let me go then? I have to think of my husband and my
child.' Then again there was silence. When they had been seated thus for
two hours, all the words that had been spoken between them had not
spread themselves over ten minutes, and Mrs. Bolton was looking forward
to hour after hour of the same kind. It did not seem to her to be
possible that Hester should be forced up into her own room. Even she,
with all her hardihood, could not ask the men about the place to take
her in their arms and carry her with violence up the stairs. Nor would
the men have done it, if so required. Nothing but a policeman's garb
will seem to justify the laying of a hand upon a woman, and even that
will hardly do it unless the woman be odiously disreputable. Mrs. Bolton
saw clearly what was before her. Should Hester be strong in her purpose
to remain seated as at present, she also must remain seated. Weariness
and solicitude for her baby might perhaps drive the young mother to bed.
Then she also would go to her bed,--and would rest, with one eye ever
open, with her ears always on the alert. She was somewhat sure of
herself. Her life had not been so soft but that she could endure
much,--and of her purpose she was quite sure. Nothing would trouble her
conscience if she could succeed in keeping her daughter separated from
John Caldigate.

Caldigate in his hot haste walked up to the iron gates and found them
chained. It was in vain that he shook them, and in vain that he looked
at them. The gates were fully twelve feet high, and spiked at the top.
At each side of the gates ran a wall surmounted by iron
railings,--extending to the gardener's cottage on the one side, and to
the coach-house on the other. The drive up to the house, which swept
round a plot of thick shrubs, lay between the various offices,--the
stables and coach-house being on one side, and the laundry and
gardener's cottage on the other. From the road there was no mode of
ingress for him to this enclosure, unless he could get over the
railings. This might perhaps have been possible, but it would have been
quite impossible for him to bring his wife back by the same way. There
was a bell at the gardener's little gate, which he rang loudly; but no
one would come to him. At last he made his way round into the
kitchen-garden by a corner where access was made by climbing a
moderately high gate which gave an entrance to the fields. From thence
he had no diff