’It is all untrue.  As there is a God above me I am her loyal, loving husband.  I will buy off no witness.’

’If I were you I would make no such attempt.  It will do no good.  I do not think that you have a chance of being acquitted,—­not a chance; and then how much worse it will be for Hester when she finds herself still in your house!’

‘She will remain there.’

’Even she will feel that to be impossible.  Your influence will then probably be removed, and I presume that for a time you will have no home.  But we need not discuss that.  As you are here, I should not do my duty were I not to assure you that as far as we are concerned,—­Hester’s family,—­nothing shall be spared either in trouble or money to insure the conviction and punishment of the man whom we believe to have brought upon us so terrible a disgrace.’

Caldigate, when he got out into the street, felt that he was driven almost to despair.  At first he declared to himself, most untruly, that there was no one to believe him,—­no, not one.  Then he remembered how faithful was his wife; and as he did so, in his misery, he told himself that it might have been better for her had she been less faithful.  Looking at it all as he now looked at it, after hearing the words of that hard man, he almost thought that it would have been so.  Everybody told him that he would be condemned; and if so, what would be the fate of that poor young mother and her child?  It was very well for her to declare, with her arms round his neck, that even should he be dragged away to prison, she would still be his true wife, and that she would wait,—­in sorrow indeed and mourning, but still with patience,—­till the cruel jailers and the harsh laws had restored him to her.  If the law declared him a bigamist, she could not then be his wife.  The law must decide,—­whether rightly or wrongly, still must decide.  And then how could they live together?  An evil done must be endured, let it be ever so unendurable.  But against fresh evils a man may guard.  Was it not his duty, his manifest, his chief duty, to save her, as far as she could be saved, from further suffering and increased disgrace?  Perhaps, after all, Robert Bolton was right when he told him that he ought to have allowed Hester to remain at Chesterton.

Whatever he might do when he got to London, he felt it to be his duty to go up and keep his appointment with Bollum.  And he brought with him from home securities and certificates for stock by which he knew that he could raise the sum named at a moment’s warning, should he at last decide upon paying the money.  When he got into the train, and when he got out of the train, he was still in doubt.  Those to whom he had gone for advice had been so hard to him, that he felt himself compelled to put on one side all that they had said.  Bollum had suggested, in his graphic manner, that a lawyer and his client stood upon different legs.  Caldigate acknowledged