‘Her very nature will have been altered by that time,’ said the attorney.  ’She will, I trust, have consented before that to take up her residence under your roof.’

‘I shall be dead,’ said the old man.  ’Disgrace and years together will have killed me before that time comes.’

The Smirkies were staying at Babington, and the desire for news there was very intent.  Mr. Smirkie was full of thought on the matter, but was manifestly in favour of a conviction.  ’Yes; the poor young woman is very much to be pitied,’ he said, in answer to the squire, who had ventured to utter a word in favour of Hester.  ’A young woman who falls into the hands of an evil man must always be pitied; but it is to prevent the evil men from preying upon the weaker sex that examples such as these are needed.  When we think what might have been the case here, in this house, we have all of us a peculiar reason to be thankful for the interposition of divine Providence.’  Here Mr. Smirkie made a little gesture of thanksgiving, thanking Heaven for its goodness to his wife in having given her himself.  ’Julia, my love, you have a very peculiar reason to be thankful, and I trust you are so.  Yes,—­we must pity the poor young lady; but it will be well that the offender should be made subject to the outraged laws of his country.’  Mrs. Smirkie, as she listened to these eloquent words, closed her eyes and hands in token of her thankfulness for all that Providence had done for her.

If she knew how to compare her condition with that of poor Hester at this time, she had indeed cause for thankfulness.  Hester was alone with her baby, and with no information but what had been conveyed to her by her husband’s letters.  As she read the last of the two she acknowledged to herself that too probably she would not even see his handwriting again till the period of his punishment should have expired.  And then?  What would come then?  Sitting alone, at the open window of her bed-room, with her boy on her lap, she endeavoured to realise her own position.  She would be a mother, without a husband,—­with her bastard child.  However innocent he might be, such would be her position under the law.  It did not suffice that they too should be man and wife as thoroughly as any whom God had joined together, if twelve men assembled together in a jury-box should say otherwise.  She had told him that she would be brave;—­but how should she be brave in such a condition as this?  What should she do?  How should she look forward to the time of his release?  Could anything ever again give her back her husband and make him her own in the eyes of men?  Could anything make men believe that he had always been her own, and that there had been no flaw?  She had been very brave when they had attempted to confine her, to hold her by force at Chesterton.  Then she had been made strong, had always been comforted, by opposition.  The determination of her purpose to go back had supported her.  But now,—­how should it be with her now? and with her boy? and with him?