'Pray do not speak of it, dear mamma.'
'Have I not come here on purpose that I might speak of it? Sweet as it is to me to have you in my arms, do you not know that I have come for that purpose,—for that only?'
'It cannot be so.'
'I will not take such an answer, Hester. I am not here to speak of pleasure or delights,—not to speak of sweet companionship, or even of a return to that more godly life which, I think, you would find in your father's house. Had not this ruin come, unhappy though I might have been, and distrustful, I should not have interfered. Those whom God has joined together, let not man put asunder.'
'It is what I say to myself every hour. God has joined us, and no man, no number of men, shall put us asunder.'
'But, my own darling,—God has not joined you! When he pretended to be joined to you, he had a wife then living,—still living.'
'No.'
'Will you set up your own opinion against evidence which the jury has believed, which the judge has believed, which all the world has believed?'
'Yes, I will,' said Hester, the whole nature of whose face was now altered, and who looked as she did when sitting in the hall-chair at Puritan Grange,—'I will. Though I were almost to know that he had been false, I should still believe him to be true.'
'I cannot understand that, Hester.'