have been good to you?  Do you remember David’s words; “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses; but we will remember the name of the Lord our God”?  And then, again; “They are brought down and fallen; but we are risen and stand upright.”  Ask yourself whether you have stood upright or have fallen, since you left your father’s house; whether you have trusted in the Lord your God, or in horses and chariots,—­that is, in the vain comforts of an easy life?  If it be so, can it be for your good that you have left your father’s house?  And should you not accept this scourge that has fallen upon you as a healing balm from the hands of the Lord?

    ’My child, I have no other answer to send you.  That I love you till
    my very bowels yearn after you is most true.  But I cannot profess to
    believe a lie, or declare that to be good which I know to be evil.

    ’May the Lord bless you, and turn your feet aright, and restore you
    to your loving mother,

    ‘Mary Bolton.’

When Hester read this she was almost crushed.  The delay since the new tidings had come to her had not, in truth, been very great.  It was not yet quite a month since Shand had been at Folking, and a shorter period since the discoveries of Bagwax had been explained to her.  But the days seemed to her to be very long; and day after day she thought that on that day at least the news of his promised release would be brought to her.  And now, instead of these news, there came this letter from her mother, harder almost in its words than any words which had hitherto been either written or spoken in the matter.  Even when all the world should have declared him innocent,—­when the Queen, and the great officer of State, and that stern judge, should have said that he was innocent,—­even then her cruel mother would refuse to receive him!  She had been invited to ask herself certain questions as to the state of her soul, and as to the teaching she had received since her marriage.  The subject is one on which there is no possible means of convergence between persons who have learned to differ.  Her mother’s allusions to chariots and horses was to her the enthusiasm of a fanatic.  No doubt, teaching had come to her from her husband, but it had come at the period of life at which such lessons are easily learned.  ’Brought down and fallen!’ she said to herself.  ‘Yes, we are all brought down and fallen;’ for she had not at all discarded the principles of her religious faith;—­’but a woman will hardly raise herself by being untrue to her husband.’  She, too, yearned for her mother;—­but there was never a moment’s doubt in her mind to which she would cling if at last it should become necessary that one should be cast off.

Mrs. Bolton, when the letter had been despatched, sat brooding over it in deep regret mixed with deeper anger.  She was preparing for herself an awful tragedy.  She must be severed for ever from her daughter, and so severed with the opinion of all her neighbours against her!  But what was all that if she had done right?  Or of what service to her would be the contrary if she were herself to think,—­nay, to know,—­that she had done wrong?