panionship, or even of a
return to that more godly life which, I think, you would find in your
father's house. Had not this ruin come, unhappy though I might have
been, and distrustful, I should not have interfered. Those whom God has
joined together, let not man put asunder.'

'It is what I say to myself every hour. God has joined us, and no man,
no number of men, shall put us asunder.'

'But, my own darling,--God has not joined you! When he pretended to be
joined to you, he had a wife then living,--still living.'

'No.'

'Will you set up your own opinion against evidence which the jury has
believed, which the judge has believed, which all the world has
believed?'

'Yes, I will,' said Hester, the whole nature of whose face was now
altered, and who looked as she did when sitting in the hall-chair at
Puritan Grange,--'I will. Though I were almost to know that he had been
false, I should still believe him to be true.'

'I cannot understand that, Hester.'

'But I know him to be true,--quite true,' she said, wishing to erase the
feeling which her unguarded admission had made. 'Not to believe him to
have been true would be death to me; and for my boy's sake, I would wish
to live. But I have no doubt, and I will listen to no one,--not even to
you, when you tell me that God did not join us together.'

'You cannot go behind the law, Hester. As a citizen, you must obey the
law.'

'I will live here,--as a citizen,--till he has been restored to me.'

'But he will not then be your husband. People will not call you by his
name. He cannot have two wives. She will be his wife. Oh, Hester, have
you thought of it?'

'I have thought of it,' she said, raising her face, looking upwards
through the open window, out away towards the heavens, and pressing her
foot firmly upon the floor. 'I have thought of it,--very much; and I
have asked--the Lord--for counsel. And He has given it me. He has told
me what to believe, what to know, and how to live. I will never again
lie with my head upon his bosom unless all that be altered. But I will
serve him as his wife, and obey him; and if I can I will comfort him. I
will never desert him. And not all the laws that were ever made, nor all
the judges that ever sat in judgment shall make me call myself by
another name than his.'

The mother had come there to speak burning words, and she had in some
sort prepared them; but now she found herself almost silenced by the
energy of her daughter.