from her her treasure, her one treasure.  And that other man whom she had always feared and always hated, Robert Bolton, the man whose craft and worldliness had ever prevented her from emancipating her husband from the flesh and the devil, had brought all this about.  Then she reconciled herself to her child, and wept over her, and implored heaven to save her.  Hester tried to argue with her,—­spoke of her own love,—­appealed to her mother, asking whether, as she had now declared her love, it could be right that she should abandon a man who was so good and so fondly attached to her.  Then Mrs. Bolton would hide her face, and sob, and put up renewed prayers to heaven that her daughter might not by means of this unhappy marriage become lost to all sense of grace.

It was very miserable, but still the prospect of the marriage was never abandoned nor postponed.  A day had been settled a little before Christmas, and the Robert Boltons would allow of no postponement.  The old man was so tormented by the misery of his own home that he himself was averse to delay.  There could be no comfort for him till the thing should have been done.  Mrs. Bolton had suggested that it should be put off till the spring;—­but he had gloomily replied that as the thing had to be done, the sooner it was done the better.

It had been settled almost from the first that the marriage festival should be held, not at Puritan Grange, but at The Nurseries; and gradually it came to be understood that Mrs. Bolton herself would not be present, either at the church or at the breakfast.  It was in vain that Hester implored her mother to yield to her in something, to stand with her at any rate on the steps before the altar.  ’Would you wish me to go and lie before my God?’ said the unhappy woman.  ’When I would give all that I have in the world except my soul,—­my life, my name, even my child herself, to prevent this, am I to go and smile and be congratulated, and to look as though I were happy?’ There was, therefore, very much unhappiness at the Grange, and an absence of all triumph even at The Nurseries.  At the old bank-house in the town where the Nicholases lived, the marriage was openly denounced; and even the Daniels, though they were pledged to be present, were in doubt.

‘I suppose it is all right,’ said Mrs. Robert to her husband.

‘Of course it is all right.  Why not?’

’It seems sad that such an event as a marriage should give rise to so much ill-feeling.  I almost wish we had not meddled, Robert.’

’I don’t think there is anything to regret.  Remember what Hester’s position would have been if my father had died, leaving her simply to her mother’s guardianship!  We were bound to free her from that, and we have done it.’  This was all very well;—­but still there was no triumph, no ringing of those inward marriage bells the sound of whose music ought to be so pleasant to both the families concerned.