’Will you not come and pray that I may be delivered also from that?  As I am going from you, will you not let me know that you are there with me at the last moment.  Though you do not love him, you do not wish to quarrel with me.  Oh, mamma, let me feel at any rate that you are there.’  Then the mother promised that she would be there, in the church, though unknown to or at least unrecognised by any one else.  When the morning came, and when Hester was dropped at The Nurseries, in order that she might go up and be invested in her finery amidst her bridesmaids, who were all her cousins, the carriage went on and took Mrs. Bolton to the church.  It was represented to her that, by this arrangement, she would be forced to remain an hour alone in the cold building.  But she was one of those who regarded all discomfort as meritorious, as in some way adding something to her claim for heaven.  Self-scourging with rods as a penance, was to her thinking a papistical ordinance most abominable and damnatory; but the essence of the self-scourging was as comfortable to her as ever was a hair-shirt to a Roman Catholic enthusiast.  So she went and sat apart in a dark distant pew, dressed in black and deeply veiled, praying, not it is to be feared, that John Caldigate might be a good husband to her girl, but that he, as he made his way downward to things below, might not drag her darling with him.  That only a few can be saved was the fact in all her religion with which she was most thoroughly conversant.  The strait way and the narrow gate, through which only a few can pass!  Were they not known to all believers, to all who had a glimmering of belief, as an established part of the Christian faith, as a part so established that to dream even that the gate would be made broad and the way open would be to dream against the Gospel, against the very plainest of God’s words?  If so,—­and she would tell herself at all hours that certainly, certainly, certainly so it was,—­then why should she trouble herself for one so little likely to come in the way of salvation as this man who was now robbing her of her daughter?  If it was the will of the Almighty,—­as it clearly was the will of the Almighty,—­that, out of every hundred, ninety and nine should perish, could she dare now to pray more than for one?  Or if her prayers were wider must they not be inefficacious?  Yes;—­there had been the thief upon the cross!  It was all possible.  But this man was a thief, not upon the cross.  And, therefore, as she prayed that morning she said not a prayer for him.

In the meantime the carriage had gone back for the bride, who in very simple raiment, but yet in bridal-white array, was taken up to the church.  These Boltons were prosperous people, who had all their carriages, so that there was no lack of vehicles.  Two of the girls from London and two from The Nurseries made up the bevy of bridesmaids who were as bright and fair as though the bride had come from some worldlier stock.  Mrs. Robert, indeed, had done all she could to give to the whole concern a becoming bridal brightness, till even Mrs. Daniel had been tempted to remonstrate.  ’I don’t see why you shouldn’t wear pretty things if you’ve got the money to pay for them,’ said Mrs. Robert.  Mrs. Daniel shook her head, but on the afternoon before the wedding she bought an additional ribbon.