e, she had better not. If so, how will it be with
her when he is released? The two years will soon go by, and then she
will be in his house. If that woman should die, he might marry her,--but
till then she had better be with her own people.'

'She shall stay with me,' the old man said again, repeating the words
angrily, and shaking his head. He was so stunned by the blow that he
could not argue the matter, but he knew that he had made the promise,
and that he was resolved to abide by it.

She had better go back to her own people! All the world was saying it.
She had no husband now. Everybody would respect her misfortune.
Everybody would acknowledge her innocence. All would sympathise with
her. All would love her. But she must go back to her own people. There
was not a dissentient voice. 'Of course she must go back to you now,'
Nicholas Bolton said to her father, and Nicholas Bolton seldom
interfered in anything. 'The poor lady will of course be restored to her
family,' the judge had said in private to his marshal, and the marshal
had of course made known what the judge had said. On the next morning
there came a letter from William Bolton to Robert. 'Of course Hester
must come back now. Nothing else is possible.' Everybody decided that
she must come back. It was a matter which admitted of no doubt. But how
was she to be brought to Chesterton?

None of them who decided with so much confidence as to her future,
understood her ideas of her position as a wife. 'I am bone of his bone
and flesh of his flesh,' she said to herself, 'made so by a sacrament
which no jury can touch. What matters what the people say? They may make
me more unhappy than I am. They may kill me by their cruelty. But they
cannot make me believe myself not to be his wife. And while I am his
wife, I will obey him, and him only.'

What she called 'their cruelty' manifested itself very soon. The first
person who came to her was Mrs. Robert Bolton, and her visit was made on
the day after the verdict. When Hester sent down word begging to be
permitted in her misery to decline to see even her sister-in-law, Mrs.
Robert sent her up a word or two written in pencil--'My darling, whom
have you nearer? Who loves you better than I?' Then the wretched one
gave way, and allowed her brother's wife to be brought to her. She was
already dressed from head to foot in black, and her baby was with her.

The arguments which Mrs. Robert Bolton used need not be repeated, but