less likely to be burned.  That her daughter should become chaff also,—­ah, there was the agony of it!  If instead of taking the husband and wife together she could even now separate them,—­would it not be her duty to do so?  Of all duties would it not be the first?  Let the misery here be what it might, what was that to eternal misery or to eternal bliss?  When therefore she was asked whether she would be doing evil were she to be gracious to her own son-in-law, she was quite, quite sure that any such civility would be a sin.  The man was pitch,—­though she had been coerced by the exigencies of a worldly courtesy to deny that she had intended to say so.  He was pitch to her, and she declared to herself that were she to touch him she would be denied.  But she knew not in what language to explain all this.  ’What you call graciousness, Hester, is an obligation of which religion knows nothing,’ she said after a pause.

’I don’t know why it shouldn’t.  Are we to be divided, mamma, because of religion?’

‘If you were alone——­’

’But I am not alone.  Oh, mamma, mamma, do you not know that I am going to become a mother?’

‘My child!’

’And you will not be with me, because you think that you and John differ as to religious forms.’

‘Forms!’ she said.  ’Forms!  Is the spirit there?  By their fruits ye shall know them.  I ask you yourself whether his life as you have seen it is such as I should think conformable with the Word of God?’

‘Whose life is so?’

’But an effort may be made.  Do not let us palter with each other, Hester!  There are the sheep,—­and there are the goats!  Of which is he?  According to the teaching of your early years, in which flock would he be found if account were taken now?’

There was something so terrible in this that the young wife who was thus called upon to denounce her husband separated herself by some steps from her mother, retreating back to a chair in which she seated herself.  ’Do you remember, mamma, the words you said just now?  Judge not and ye shall not be judged.’

‘Nor do I judge.’

‘And how does it go on?  Forgive and ye shall be forgiven.’

‘Neither do I judge, nor can I forgive.’  This she said, putting all her emphasis on the pronoun, and thereby declaring her own humility.  ’But the great truths of my religion are dear to me.  I will not trust myself in the way of sinners, because by some worldly alliance to which I myself was no consenting party, I have been brought into worldly contact with them.  I at any rate will be firm.  I say to you now no more than I said, ah, so many times, when it was still possible that my words should not be vain.  They were vain.  But not on that account am I to be changed.  I will not be wound like a skein of silk round your little finger.’  That was it.  Was she to give way in everything because they had been successful among them in carrying out this marriage in opposition to her judgment?