people's heads.
I am not in the least angry with Mr. Seely, and feel that it is only too
likely that the Secretary of State and the judge will think the same. If
I were Secretary of State I should have to think so.'

'I couldn't suspect people like that.'

'And therefore, my dear, you are hardly fit to be Secretary of State. We
must not be too sanguine. That is all.'

But Hester was very sanguine. When it was fully known that Dick had
written to Mr. Seely immediately on his arrival at Pollington, and that
he had shown himself to be a warm partisan in the Caldigate interests,
she could not rest till she saw him herself, and persuaded Mr. Caldigate
to invite him down to Folking. To Folking therefore he went, with the
full intention of declaring John Caldigate's innocence, not only there,
but all through Cambridgeshire. The Boltons, of whom he had now heard
something, should be made to know what an honest man had to say on the
subject,--an honest man, and who was really on the spot at the time. To
Dick's mind it was marvellous that the Boltons should have been anxious
to secure a verdict against Caldigate,--which verdict was also against
their own daughter and their own sister. Being quite sure himself that
Caldigate was innocent, he could not understand the condition of feeling
which would be produced by an equally strong conviction of his guilt.
Nor was his mind, probably, imbued with much of that religious scruple
which made the idea of a feigned marriage so insupportable to all
Hester's relations. Nor was he aware that when a man has taken a
preconception home to himself and fastened it and fixed it, as it were,
into his bosom, he cannot easily expel it,--even though personal
interest should be on the side of such expulsion. It had become a
settled belief with the Boltons that John Caldigate was a bigamist,
which belief had certainly been strengthened by the pertinacious
hostility of Hester's mother. Dick had heard something of all this, and
thought that he would be able to open their eyes.

When he arrived at Folking he was received with open arms. Sir John
Joram had not quite liked him, because his manner had been rough. Mr.
Seely had regarded him from the first as a ruined man, and therefore a
willing perjurer. Even at Pollington his 'bush' manners had been a
little distasteful to all except his mother. Mr. Caldigate felt some
difficulty in making conversation with him. But to Hester he was as an
angel from heav