from the letter; but he was almost ashamed of his own tenderness, as being a sign of weakness.  He made himself very busy in these days,—­busy among his brother magistrates, busy among his farming operations, busy with his tenants, busy among his books, so as to show to those around him that he was one who could perform all the duties of life, and enjoy all the pleasures, with an open brow and a clear conscience.  He had been ever bold and self-asserting; but now he was perhaps a little over-bold.  But through it all the Australian letter and the Australian woman were present to him day and night.

It was this resolution not to be quelled that had made him call upon the attorney at his office; and when he found himself back in the street he was very angry with the man.  ‘If it pleases him, let it be so,’ he said to himself.  ‘I can do in the world without him.’  And then he thought of that threat,—­when the attorney had said that he would remove his sister.  ‘Remove her!  By heavens!’ He had a stick in his hand, and as he went he struck it angrily against a post.  Remove his wife!  All the Boltons in Cambridgeshire could not put a hand upon her, unless by his leave!  For some moments his anger supported him; but after a while that gave way to the old feeling of discomfort which pervaded him always.  She was his wife, and nobody should touch her.  Nevertheless he might find it difficult, as Robert Bolton had said, to prove that that other woman was not his wife.

Robert Bolton’s office was in a small street close to Pembroke College, and when he came out of it he had intended to walk direct through Trumpington Street and Trinity Street to Chesterton.  But he found it necessary to compose himself and so to arrange his thoughts that he might be able to answer such foolish questions as Mrs. Bolton would probably ask him without being flurried.  He was almost sure that she had heard nothing of the woman.  He did not suspect Robert Bolton of treachery in that respect; but she would probably talk to him about the iniquity of his past life generally, and he must be prepared to answer her.  It was incumbent upon him to shake off, before he reached Chesterton, that mixture of alarm and anger which at present dominated him; and with this object, instead of going straight along the street, he turned into the quadrangle of King’s College, and passing through the gardens and over the bridge, wandered for a while slowly under the trees at the back of the college.  He accused himself of a lack of manliness in that he allowed himself to be thus cowed.  Did he not know that such threats as these were common?  Was it not just what might have been expected from such a one as Crinkett, when Crinkett was driven to desperation by failing speculations?  As he thought of the woman, he shook his head, looking down upon the ground.  The woman had at one time been very dear to him.  But it was clearly now his duty to go on as though there were no such woman as Euphemia Smith, and no such man as Thomas Crinkett.  And as for Robert Bolton, he would henceforth treat him as though his anger and his suspicions were unworthy of notice.  If the man should choose of his own accord to reassume the old friendly relations,—­well and good.  No overtures should come from him—­Caldigate.  And if the anger and the suspicions endured, why then, he, Caldigate, could do very well without Robert Bolton.