And so did Hester.  But as this day went on, Hester became at times almost hysterical in her efforts to communicate with her husband through the window, holding up her baby and throwing back her head, and was almost in convulsions in her efforts to get at him.  He on the other side thundered at the door with the knocker, till that instrument had been unscrewed from within.  But still he could knock with his stick and shout with his voice; while the people outside the iron gates stood looking on in a crowd.  In the course of the day Robert Bolton endeavoured to get an order from the magistrates for the removal of Caldigate by the police.  But the mayor would not assent either to that.  Old Mr. Bolton was the owner of the house, and if there was a nuisance to be complained of, it was he that must complain.  The mayor during these days was much tried.  The steady married people of the borough,—­the shopkeepers and their wives, the doctors and lawyers and clergymen,—­were in favour of Mr. and Mrs. Bolton.  It was held to be fitting that a poor lady in Hester’s unfortunate position should be consigned to the care of her parents till the matter had been settled.  But the people generally sympathised with the young husband and young wife, and were loud in denouncing the illegality of the banker’s proceedings.  And it was already rumoured that among the undergraduates Caldigate’s side was favoured.  It was generally known that Crinkett and the woman had asked for money before they had brought their accusation, and on that account sympathy ran with the Squire of Folking.  The mayor, therefore, did not dare to give an order that Caldigate should be removed from off the premises at Puritan Grange, knowing that he was there in search of a wife who was only anxious to place herself in his custody.

But nothing was done all that day.  About four in the afternoon, while Caldigate was still there, and at a moment in which poor Hester had been reduced by the continuance of her efforts to a state of hysterical prostration, the old man summoned his wife upstairs.  She, with a motion to the cook, who still guarded the stairs, obeyed the order, and for a moment left her watch.

‘You must let her go,’ said the old man, with tremulous anxiety, beating with his fingers on his knees as he spoke.  ‘You must let her go.’

‘No; no!’

‘It will kill her.’

‘If I let her go, I shall kill her soul,’ said the determined woman.  ’Is not her soul more than her body?’

‘They will say we—­murdered her.’

’Who will say it?  And what would that be but the breath of a man?  Does not our Father who is in heaven know that I would die to do her a service, if the service accorded with His will?  Does He not know that I am cruel to her here in order that she may be saved from eternal——­’ She was going to say, in the natural fervour of her speech, ’from eternal cruelty to come,’ but she checked herself.  To have admitted that such a judgment could be worse than just, worse even than merciful, would be blasphemy to her.  ’Oh, He knows!  He knows!  And if He knows, what matters what men say that I have done to her.’