It was fearful work,—­work so cruel that his physical strength hardly enabled him to support it.  He already repented his present conduct, telling himself that it would have been better to have treated the men from the first as spies and enemies;—­though in truth his conduct had probably been the wisest he could have adopted.  At last he had the men inside the hall door, and, introducing them hurriedly to his father, he left them that he might rush up to his wife’s bedroom.  The nurse was there and her mother; and, at the moment, she only looked at him.  She was too wise to speak to him before them.  But at last she succeeded in making an opportunity of being alone with her husband.  ’You stay here, nurse; I’ll be back directly, mamma,’ and then she took him across the passage into his own dressing-room.  ‘Who are they, John? who are they?’

’They are men from the mines.  As they were my partners, I have asked them to come in to breakfast.’

‘And the woman?’ As she spoke she held on to the back of a chair by which she stood, and only whispered her question.

‘No woman is with them.’

‘Is it the man,—­Crinkett?’

‘Yes, it is Crinkett.’

‘In this house!  And I am to sit at table with him?’

’It will be best so.  Listen, dearest; all that I know, all that we know of Crinkett is, that he is asking money of me because the purchase he made of me has turned out badly for him.’

‘But he is to marry that woman, who says that she is—­’ Then she stopped, looking into his face with agony.  She could not bring herself to utter the words which would signify that another woman claimed to be her husband’s wife.

’You are going too fast, Hester.  I cannot condemn the man for what the woman has written until I know that he says the same himself.  He was my partner, and I have had his money;—­I fear, all his money.  He as yet has said nothing about the woman.  As it is so, it behoves me to be courteous to him.  That I am suffering much, you must be well aware.  I am sure you will not make it worse for me.’

‘No, no,’ she said, embracing him; ’I will not.  I will be brave.  I will do all that I can.  But you will tell me everything?’

‘Everything,’ he said.  Then he kissed her, and went back again to his unwelcome guests.  She was not long before she followed him, bringing her baby in her arms.  Then she took the child round to be kissed by all its relatives, and afterwards bowed politely to the two men, and told them that she was glad to see her husband’s old friends and fellow-workmen.

‘Yes, mum,’ said Jack Adamson; ’we’ve been fellow-workmen when the work was hard enough.  ’T young squire seems to have got over his difficulties pretty tidy!’ Then she smiled again, and nodded to them, and retreated back to her mother.

Mrs. Bolton scowled at them, feeling certain that they were godless persons;—­in which she was right.  The old banker, drawing his son Daniel out of the room, whispered an inquiry; but Daniel Bolton knew nothing.  ‘There’s been something wrong as to the sale of that mine,’ said the banker.  Daniel Bolton thought it probable that there had been something wrong.