tand upon as a wife, and as a wife she had stood upon it very
firmly. But now there was not an inch of ground. The man had been
convicted as a bigamist, and the other woman, the first woman, had been
proved to be his wife. Mrs. Bolton had got it into her head that the two
had been dissevered as though by some supernal power; and no explanation
to the contrary, brought to her by her husband from Robert, had any
power of shaking her conviction. It was manifest to all men and to all
women, that she who had been seduced, betrayed, and sacrificed should
now return with her innocent babe to the protection of her father's
roof; and no stone must be left unturned till the unfortunate one had
been made to understand her duty.

The old banker in these days had not a good time, nor, indeed, had the
Boltons generally. Mrs. Bolton, though prone to grasp at power on every
side, was apt, like some other women who are equally grasping, to
expect almost omnipotence from the men around her when she was desirous
that something should be done by them in accordance with her own
bidding. Knowing her husband to be weak from age and sorrow, she could
still jeer at him because he was not abnormally strong; and though her
intercourse with his sons and their families was now scanty and
infrequent, still by a word here and a line there she could make her
reproaches felt by them all. Robert, who saw his father every day, heard
very much of them. Daniel was often stung, and even Nicholas. And the
reproaches reached as far as William, the barrister up in London.

'I am sure I don't know what we can do,' said the miserable father,
sitting huddled up in his arm-chair one evening towards the end of
August. It was very hot, but the windows were closed because he could
not bear a draught, and he was somewhat impatiently waiting for the hour
of prayers which were antecedent to bed, where he could be silent even
if he could not sleep.

'There are five of you. One should be at the house every day to tell her
of her duty.'

'I couldn't go.'

'They could go,--if they cared. If they cared they would go. They are
her brothers.'

'Mr. Caldigate would not let them enter the house,' said the old man.

'Do you mean that he would separate her from her brother and her
parents?'

'Not if she wished to see them. She is her own mistress, and he will
abet her in whatever she may choose to do. That is what Robert says.'

'And what Robert says is to be law?'

'