‘I am sure you will all agree with me,’ he said, ’that no personal feeling in regard to Caldigate should influence your judgment.  For myself, I like the man.  But that, I think, has had nothing to do with my opinion.  If it had been the case that, having a wife living, he had betrayed my sister into all the misery of a false marriage, and had made her the mother of a nameless child, I should have felt myself bound to punish him to every extent within my power.  I do not think it unchristian to say that in such a case I could not have forgiven him.  But presuming it to be otherwise,—­as we all shall be bound to do if he be pardoned,—­then, for Hester’s sake, we should receive the man with whom her lot in life is so closely connected.  She, poor dear, has suffered enough, and should not be subjected to the further trouble of our estrangement.

’Nor, if we acknowledge the charge against him to be untrue, is there any reason for a quarrel.  If he has not been bad to our sister in that matter, he has been altogether good to her.  She has for him that devotion which is the best evidence that a marriage has been well chosen.  Presuming him to be innocent, we must confess, as to her, that she has been simply loyal to her husband,—­with such loyalty as every married man would desire.  For this she should be rewarded rather than punished.

’I write to you thinking that in this way I may best reach my father and Mrs. Bolton.  I would go down and see them did I not know that your words would be more efficacious with them than my own.  And I do it as a duty to my sister, which I feel myself bound to perform.  Pray forgive me if I remind you that in this respect she has a peculiar right to a performance of your duty in the matter.  You counselled and carried out the marriage,—­not at all unfortunately if the man be, as I think, innocent.  But you are bound at any rate to sift the evidence very closely, and not to mar her happiness by refusing to acknowledge him if there be reasonable ground for supposing the verdict to have been incorrect.’

Sift the evidence, indeed!  Robert Bolton had done that already very closely.  Bagwax and the stamps had not moved him, nor the direct assurance of Dick Shand.  But the incarceration by Government of Crinkett and Euphemia Smith had shaken him, and the fact that they had endeavoured to escape the moment they heard of Shand’s arrival.  But not the less had he hated Caldigate.  The feeling which had been impressed on his mind when the first facts were made known to him remained.  Caldigate had been engaged to marry the woman, and had lived with her, and had addressed her as his wife!  The man had in a way got the better of him.  And then the twenty thousand pounds!  And then, again, Caldigate’s manner to himself!  He could not get over his personal aversion, and therefore unconsciously wished that his brother-in-law should be guilty,—­wished at any rate that he should be kept in prison.  Gradually had fallen upon him the conviction that