Any other woman might have adduced the envelope as evidence of his marriage with her! It was, he said, monstrous that any one should give credence to such bundles of lies.

Therefore his words were gospel, and his wishes were laws to Hester.

She clung round him, and hovered over him, and patted him like a very daughter, insisting that he should nurse the baby, and talking of him to her husband as though he were manifestly the wisest man in Cambridgeshire.

She forgot even that little flaw in his religious belief.

To her thinking at the present moment, a man who would believe that her baby was the honest son of an honest father and mother had almost religion enough for all purposes.
'Quite right that you should go,' said the old man.
'I think so,' said the husband, 'though I am afraid they will trouble her.' 'The only question is whether they will let her come back.' 'What!' exclaimed Hester.
'Whether they won't keep you when they've got you.' 'I won't be kept.