When they had been seated thus for two hours, all the words that had been spoken between them had not spread themselves over ten minutes, and Mrs.Bolton was looking forward to hour after hour of the same kind.

It did not seem to her to be possible that Hester should be forced up into her own room.

Even she, with all her hardihood, could not ask the men about the place to take her in their arms and carry her with violence up the stairs.

Nor would the men have done it, if so required.

Nothing but a policeman's garb will seem to justify the laying of a hand upon a woman, and even that will hardly do it unless the woman be odiously disreputable.