‘He has got my child from me,—­my only child.’

’Does he persecute your child?  Is she not happy in his love?  Even if he have trespassed against you, who are you that you should not forgive a trespass?  I say that he shall be asked to come here, that men may know that in her own father’s house she is regarded as his true and honest wife.’

‘Men!’ she murmured.  ‘That men may know!’ But she did not again tell him that she would not obey his command.

She sat all the remainder of the day alone in her room, hardly touching the work which she had beside her, not opening the book which lay by her hand on the table.  She was thinking of the letter which she knew that she must write, but she did not rise to get pen and ink, nor did she even propose to herself that the letter should be written then.  Not a word was said about it all the evening.  On the next morning the banker pronounced his intention of going into town, but before he started he referred to the order he had given.  ‘Have you written to Hester?’ he asked.  She merely shook her head.  ‘Then write to-day.’  So saying, he tottered down the steps with his stick and got into the fly.

About noon she did get her paper and ink, and very slowly wrote her letter.  Though her heart was, in truth, yearning towards her daughter,—­though at that moment she could have made any possible sacrifice for her child had her child been apart from the man she hated,—­she could not in her sullenness force her words into a form of affection.

‘DEAR HESTER,’ she said.  ’Of course I shall be glad to see you and your boy.  On what day would it suit you to come, and how long would you like to stay?  I fear you will find me and your father but dull companions after the life you are now used to.  If Mr. Caldigate would like to come with you, your father bids me say that he will be glad to see him.—­Your loving mother,

    ‘MARY BOLTON.’

She endeavoured, in writing her letter, to obey the commands that had been left with her, but she could not go nearer to it than this.  She could not so far belie her heart as to tell her daughter that she herself would be glad to see the man.  Then it took her long to write the address.  She did write it at last;

  Mrs. JOHN CALDIGATE,
  FOLKING.

But as she wrote it she told herself that she believed it to be a lie.

When the letter reached Hester there was a consultation over it, to which old Mr. Caldigate was admitted.  It was acknowledged on all sides that anything would be better than a family quarrel.  The spirit in which the invitation had been written was to be found in every word of it.  There was not a word to show that Mrs. Bolton had herself accepted the decision to which everyone else had come in the matter;—­everything, rather, to show that she had not done so.  But, as the squire said, it does not do to inquire too closely into all people’s inner beliefs.