very
intimate.

'I suppose it's Jones, the tanner at Ely. They say that the Caldigates
have had dealings with his family from generation to generation. I knew
all about it, and when they passed his name, I wondered that Burder
hadn't been sharper.' Mr. Burder was the gentleman who had got up the
prosecution on the part of the Crown.

'It must be something of that kind,' said the mayor. 'Nothing else would
make a jury hesitate after such a charge as that. I suppose he did marry
her.' Mr. Seely shrugged his shoulders. 'I have attended very closely to
the case, and I know I should have been against him on a jury. God bless
my soul! Did any man ever write to a woman as his wife without having
married her?'

'It has been done, I should think.'

'And that nobody should have been got to say that they weren't man and
wife.'

'I really have hardly formed an opinion,' said Mr. Seely, still
whispering, 'I am inclined to think that there was probably some
ceremony, and that Caldigate salved his conscience, when he married
Bolton's daughter, by an idea that the ceremony wasn't valid. But
they'll convict him at last. When he told me that he had been up to town
and paid that money, I knew it was all up with him. How can any juryman
believe that a man will pay twenty thousand pounds, which he doesn't
owe, to his sworn enemy, merely on a point of conscience?'

At the same time the old banker was sitting in his room at the bank, and
Robert Bolton was with him. 'There cannot be a doubt of his guilt,' said
Robert Bolton.

'No, no,--not a doubt.'

'But the jury may disagree?'

'What shall we do then?' said the banker.

'There must be another trial. We must go on till we get a verdict.'

'And Hester? What can we do for Hester?'

'She is very obstinate, and I fear we have no power. Even though she is
declared not to be his wife, she can choose her own place of living. If
he is convicted, I think that she would come back. Of course she ought
to come back.'

'Of course, of course.'

'Old Caldigate, too, is very obstinate; but it may be that we should be
able to persuade him. He will know that she ought to be with her
mother.'

'Her poor mother! Her poor mother! And when he comes out of prison?'

'Her very nature will have been altered by that time,' said the
attorney. 'She will, I trust, have consented before that to take up her
residence under your roof.'

'I shall be dead,' said the old man. 'Disgrace and years togeth