‘When will that be?’

’I am afraid that I cannot name a day.  You, Mr. Caldigate, are, I know, a gentleman of position in your county and a magistrate.  Cannot you understand how minutely facts must be investigated when a Minister of the Crown is called upon to accept the responsibility of either upsetting or confirming the verdict of a jury?’

‘The facts are as clear as daylight.’

‘If they be so, your son will soon be a free man.’

‘If you could feel what his wife suffers in the meantime!’

’Though I did feel it,—­though we all felt it; as probably we do, for though we be officials still we are men,—­how should that help us?  You would not have a man pardoned because his wife suffers!’

’Knowing how she suffered, I do not think I should let much grass grow under my feet while I was making the inquiry.’

’I hope there is no such grass grows here.  The truth is, Mr. Caldigate, that, as a rule, no person coming here on such an errand as yours is received at all.  The Secretary of State cannot, either in his own person or in that of those who are under him, put himself in communication with the friends of individuals who are under sentence.  I am sure that you, as a man conversant with the laws, must see the propriety of such a rule.’

‘I think I have a right to express my natural anxiety.’

’I will not deny it.  The post is open to you, and though I fear that our replies may not be considered altogether satisfactory, we do give our full attention to the letters we receive.  When I heard that you had been here, and had expressed an intention of returning, from respect to yourself personally I desired that you might be shown into my room.  But I could not have done that had it not been that I myself have not been concerned in this matter.’  Then he got up from his seat, and Mr. Caldigate found himself compelled to leave the room with thanks rather than with indignation.

He walked out of the big building into Downing Street, and down the steps into the park.  And going into the gardens, he wandered about them for more than an hour, sometimes walking slowly along the water-side, and then seating himself for a while on one of the benches.  What must he say to Hester in the letter which he must write as soon as he was back at his hotel?  He tried to sift some wheat out of what he was pleased to call the chaff of Mr. Brown’s courtesy.  Was there not some indication to be found in it of what the result might be?  If there were any such indication, it was, he thought, certainly adverse to his son.  In whose bosom might be the ultimate decision,—­whether in that of the Secretary, or the judge, or of some experienced clerk in the Secretary’s office,—­it was manifest that the facts which had now been proven to the world at large for many days, had none of the effects on that bosom which they had on his own.  Could it be that Shand was false, that Bagwax was false, that the postage-stamp was false,—­and that he only believed them to be true?  Was it possible that after all his son had married the woman?  He crept back to his hotel in Jermyn Street, and there he wrote his letter.