'What were they talking about?' said his wife to him when they were alone. 'I heard their voices even here.'
'They were threatening me;--threatening me and you.'
'Yes; about that woman. Not that they have dared yet to mention her name,--but it was about that woman.'
'I've heard nothing from her since that letter. I do not know that she is in England, but I suppose that she is with them.'
'Yes. It makes me fear that you for a while will be made miserable,--you whom I had thought that I could protect from all sorrow and from all care! O my darling! of course it frightens me; but it is for you.'
'They have already said words before the man there which will of course be spread about the country.'
Then he paused, but after pausing he spoke very plainly. 'They said that you were not my wife.'
'Tell me all truly. Though I were not, I would still be true to you.'
'But, Hester,--Hester, you are. Do not speak as though that were possible.'
'I know that you love me. I am sure of that. Nothing should ever make me leave you;--nothing. You are all the world to me now. Whatever you may have done I will be true to you. Only tell me everything.'
'I think I have,' he said, hoarsely. Then he remembered that he had told much to Robert Bolton which she had not heard. 'I did tell her that I would marry her.'
'Is not that a marriage in some countries?'
'I think nowhere,--certainly not there. And the people, hearing of it all, used to call her by my name.'
'It will be against me,--in the minds of persons like your mother.'
'I will care nothing for that. I know that you have repented, and are sorry. I know that you love me now.'
'I have always loved you since the first moment that I saw you.'
'Never for a moment believe that I will believe them. Let them do what they will, I will be your wife. Nothing shall take me away from you. But it is sad, is it not; on that the very day that poor baby has been christened?' Then they sat and wept together and tried to comfort each other. But nothing could comfort him. He was almost prostrated at the prospect of his coming misery,--and of hers.
The thunderbolt had fallen now. Caldigate, when he left his wife that he might stroll about the place after the dusk had fallen, told himself again and again that the thunderbolt had certainly fallen now. There could be no longer a doubt but that this woman would claim him as her husband. A whole world of remorse and regrets oppressed his conscience and his heart. He looked back and remembered the wise counsels which had been given him on board the ship, when the captain and Mrs. Callender and poor Dick Shand had remonstrated with him, and called to mind his own annoyance when he had bidden them mind their own affairs. And then he remembered how he had determined to break away from the woman at Sydney, and to explain to her, as he might then have done without injustice, that they two could be of no service the one to the other, and that they had better part. It seemed now, as he looked back, to have been so easy for him then to have avoided danger, so easy to have kept a straight course! But now,--now, surely he would be overwhelmed.