‘I cannot understand that, Hester.’

‘But I know him to be true,—­quite true,’ she said, wishing to erase the feeling which her unguarded admission had made.  ’Not to believe him to have been true would be death to me; and for my boy’s sake, I would wish to live.  But I have no doubt, and I will listen to no one,—­not even to you, when you tell me that God did not join us together.’

’You cannot go behind the law, Hester.  As a citizen, you must obey the law.’

‘I will live here,—­as a citizen,—­till he has been restored to me.’

’But he will not then be your husband.  People will not call you by his name.  He cannot have two wives.  She will be his wife.  Oh, Hester, have you thought of it?’

‘I have thought of it,’ she said, raising her face, looking upwards through the open window, out away towards the heavens, and pressing her foot firmly upon the floor.  ’I have thought of it,—­very much; and I have asked—­the Lord—­for counsel.  And He has given it me.  He has told me what to believe, what to know, and how to live.  I will never again lie with my head upon his bosom unless all that be altered.  But I will serve him as his wife, and obey him; and if I can I will comfort him.  I will never desert him.  And not all the laws that were ever made, nor all the judges that ever sat in judgment shall make me call myself by another name than his.’

The mother had come there to speak burning words, and she had in some sort prepared them; but now she found herself almost silenced by the energy of her daughter.  And when her girl told her that she had applied to her God for counsel, and that the Lord had answered her prayers—­that the Lord had directed her as to her future life,—­then the mother hardly knew how to mount to higher ground, so as to seem to speak from a more exalted eminence.  And yet she was not at all convinced.  That the Lord should give bad counsel she knew to be impossible.  That the Lord would certainly give good counsel to such a suppliant, if asked aright, she was quite sure.  But they who send others to the throne of heaven for direct advice are apt to think that the asking will not be done aright unless it be done with their spirit and their bias,—­with the spirit and bias which they feel when they recommend the operation.  No one has ever thought that direct advice from the Lord was sufficient authority for the doing of that of which he himself disapproved.  It was Mrs. Bolton’s daily custom to kneel herself and ask for such counsel, and to enjoin such asking upon all those who were subject to her influence.  But had she been assured by some young lady to whom she had recommended the practice that heavenly warrant had thus been secured for balls and theatres, she would not have scrupled to declare that the Lord had certainly not been asked aright.  She was equally certain of some defalcation now.  She did not doubt that Hester had done as she had said.  That the prayer had been put up