'The door shall not be locked. You shall have the key with you. I will do nothing to hurt you if you will go to your bed.' 'I will not go; leave me alone. You cannot love me, mamma, or you would not treat me like this.' 'Love you! Oh, my child! If you knew! If you could understand! Why am I doing this? Is it not because I feel it to be my duty? Will you let me take you to your bed?' 'No, never. I, too, can do my duty,--my duty to my husband. It is to remain here till I can get to him, even though I should die.' Then she turned her poor limbs on the hard floor, and the mother covered her with a cloak and placed a cushion beneath her head. Then, after standing a while over her child, she returned to her chair, and did not move or speak again till the old cook came, with the first glimmer of the morning, to inquire how the night had been passed. 'I cannot allow this; I cannot allow this,' said Mr. Bolton, when he shuffled down in his slippers. The old servant had been up to him and had warned him that such sufferings as these might have a tragic end,--too probably an end fatal to the infant. If the mother's strength should altogether fail her, would it not go badly with the baby? So the cook had argued, who had been stern enough herself, anxious enough to secure 'Miss Hester' from the wickedness of John Caldigate. But she was now cowed and frightened, and had acknowledged to herself that if 'Miss Hester' would not give way, then she must be allowed to go forth, let the wickedness be what it might. 'There must be an end to this,' said the old man. 'What end?' asked his wife. 'Let her obey her parents.' 'I will obey only my husband,' said Hester. 'Of course there must be an end. Let her go to her bed, and, weary as I am, I will wait upon her as only a mother can wait upon her child. Have I not prayed for her through the watches of the night, that she might be delivered from this calamity, that she might be comforted by Him in her sorrow? What have I done these two last weary days but pray to the Lord God that He might be merciful to her?' 'Let me go,' said Hester. 'I will not let you go,' said the mother, rising from her seat. 'I too can suffer. I too can endure. I will not be conquered by my own child.' There spoke the human being. That was the utterance natural to the woman. 'In this struggle, hard as it is, I will not be beat by one who has been subject to my authority.' In all those prayers,--and she had prayed,--there had been the prayer in her heart, if not in her words, that she might be saved from the humiliation of yielding.