The old man was very good, good and eager in her cause, and would let her live at Folking.  But what would they call her?  When they wrote to her from Chesterton how would they address her letters?  Never, never would she soil her fingers by touching a document that called her by any other name than her own.  Yes, her own;—­let all the jurymen in all the counties, let all the judges on the bench, say what they would to the contrary.  Though it should be for all her life,—­though there should never come the day on which they,—­they,—­the world at large would do him justice and her, though they should call her by what hard name they would, still up there, in the courts of her God, she would be his wife.  She would be a pure woman there, and there would her child be without a stain.  And here, here in this world, though she could never more be a wife in all things, she would be a wife in love, a wife in care, a wife in obedience, a wife in all godly truth.  And though it would never be possible for her to show her face again among mankind, never for her, surely the world would be kinder to her boy!  They would not begrudge him his name!  And when it should be told how it had come to pass that there was a blot upon his escutcheon, they would not remind him of his mother’s misery.  But, above all, there should be no shade of doubt as to her husband.  ‘I know,’ she said, speaking aloud, but not knowing that she spoke aloud, ‘I know that he is my husband.’  Then there was a knock at the door.  ‘Well; yes;—­has it come?  Do you know?’

No; nothing was known there at that moment, but in another minute all would be known.  The wheels of the old Squire’s carriage had been heard upon the gravel.  ‘No, ma’am, no; you shall not leave the room,’ said the nurse.  ‘Stay here and let him come to you.’

‘Is he alone?’ she asked.  But the woman did not know.  The wheels of the carriage had only been heard.

Alas, alas! he was alone.  His heart too had been almost broken as he bore the news home to the wife who was a wife no longer.

‘Father!’ she said, when she saw him.

‘My daughter;—­O my daughter!’ And then, with their hands clasped together, they sat speechless and alone, while the news was spread through the household which the old man did not dare to tell to his son’s wife.

It was very slowly that the actual tidings reached her ears.  Mr. Caldigate, when he tried to tell them, found that the power of words had left him.  Old as he was, and prone to cynic indifference as he had shown himself, he was affected almost like a young girl.  He sobbed convulsively as he hung over her, embracing her.  ‘My daughter!’ he said, ‘my daughter! my daughter!’