er will
have killed me before that time comes.'

The Smirkies were staying at Babington, and the desire for news there
was very intent. Mr. Smirkie was full of thought on the matter, but was
manifestly in favour of a conviction. 'Yes; the poor young woman is very
much to be pitied,' he said, in answer to the squire, who had ventured
to utter a word in favour of Hester. 'A young woman who falls into the
hands of an evil man must always be pitied; but it is to prevent the
evil men from preying upon the weaker sex that examples such as these
are needed. When we think what might have been the case here, in this
house, we have all of us a peculiar reason to be thankful for the
interposition of divine Providence.' Here Mr. Smirkie made a little
gesture of thanksgiving, thanking Heaven for its goodness to his wife in
having given her himself. 'Julia, my love, you have a very peculiar
reason to be thankful, and I trust you are so. Yes,--we must pity the
poor young lady; but it will be well that the offender should be made
subject to the outraged laws of his country.' Mrs. Smirkie, as she
listened to these eloquent words, closed her eyes and hands in token of
her thankfulness for all that Providence had done for her.

If she knew how to compare her condition with that of poor Hester at
this time, she had indeed cause for thankfulness. Hester was alone with
her baby, and with no information but what had been conveyed to her by
her husband's letters. As she read the last of the two she acknowledged
to herself that too probably she would not even see his handwriting
again till the period of his punishment should have expired. And then?
What would come then? Sitting alone, at the open window of her bed-room,
with her boy on her lap, she endeavoured to realise her own position.
She would be a mother, without a husband,--with her bastard child.
However innocent he might be, such would be her position under the law.
It did not suffice that they too should be man and wife as thoroughly as
any whom God had joined together, if twelve men assembled together in a
jury-box should say otherwise. She had told him that she would be
brave;--but how should she be brave in such a condition as this? What
should she do? How should she look forward to the time of his release?
Could anything ever again give her back her husband and make him her own
in the eyes of men? Could anything make men believe that he had always
been her own, and that there had