‘I certainly will not interfere,’ Robert Bolton said to his father on the next morning.  ’I will not go to Folking, because I am sure that I should do no good.  Hester, no doubt, would be better at your house,—­much better.  There is nothing I would not do to get her back from the Caldigates altogether,—­if there was a chance of success.  But we have no power;—­none whatever.’

‘No power at all,’ said the banker, shaking his head, and feeling some satisfaction at the possession of an intelligible word which he could quote to his wife.

’She is controller of her own actions as completely as are you and I. We have already seen how inefficacious with her are all attempts at persuasion.  And she knows her position.  If he were out of prison to-morrow he would be her husband.’

‘But he has another wife.’

’Of that the civil law knows nothing.  If money were coming to her he could claim it, and the verdict against him would only be evidence, to be taken for what it was worth.  It would have been all very well had she wished to sever herself from him; but as she is determined not to do so, any interference would be useless.’  The question as to the marriage or no marriage was not made quite clear to the banker’s mind, but he did understand that neither he, nor his wife, nor his sons had ‘any power,’ and of that argument he was determined to make use.

William, the barrister in London, was induced to write a letter, a very lengthy and elaborate epistle having come from Mrs. Bolton to his wife, in which the religious duty of all the Boltons was set forth in strong language, and in which he was incited to do something.  It was almost the first letter which Mrs. William Bolton had ever received from her step-mother, whatever trifling correspondence there might have been between them having been of no consequence.  They, too, felt that it would be better that Hester should return to her old home, but felt also that they had no power.  ‘Of course, she won’t,’ said Mrs. William.

‘She has a will of her own,’ said the barrister.

’Why should she?  Think of the gloom of that home at Chesterton, and her absolute independence at Folking.  No doubt it would be better.  The position is so frightful that even the gloom would be better.  But she won’t.  We all know that.’

The barrister, however, feeling that it would be better, thought that he should perform his duty by expressing his opinion, and wrote a letter to Hester, which was intended to be if possible persuasive;—­and this was the answer:—­

’Dear William,—­If you were carried away to prison on some horrible false accusation, would Fanny go away from you, and desert your house and your affairs, and return to her parents?  You ask her, and ask her whether she would believe anything that anybody could say against you.  If they told her that her children were nameless, would she agree to make them so