Oh, these Victorians! "It was a wild kind of life up there." How does this play in England? Answer: Not well. Caldigate is believed by his father, his priest, and, most importantly, by his wife. It soon becomes apparent that Hester has developed from a quiet maiden lass sitting in the corner, into an assertive wife and mother, willing to defy her mother, father, and brothers in defense of her husband and herself. And here we meet one of the blackest villains Trollope has given us: Mrs. Bolton, mother of Hester and second wife of her husband. Mrs. Bolton was a zealot of the low church (which provided Trollope with several of his villains), and her daughter's suitor never convinced her by his attendance at Sunday services that he was anything other than a "lost sinner." His father did not attend church, and despite John's efforts to keep up appearances, he did not have a history of perfect attendance at divine services. And there were even rumors of a relationship with a Mademoiselle Cettini in Australia. John made an explanation to Hester, which she accepted. But Mrs. Bolton never gave her blessing to the match, and although her daughter finally persuaded her to attend the wedding, she only did so as a heavily veiled spectator from a back pew. And then it becomes known that he has been accused of having had a wife in Australia! With the consent of her stepsons and the grudging consent of her husband, Mrs. Bolton lures her daughter to Puritan Grange, the Bolton home. In a great scene of conflict, she makes her a prisoner there. We have come to learn by this time that Hester is endowed with all her mother's determination and stubbornness. When Hester finds the doors locked against her, she seats herself in the hall with her baby in her arms, opposite her mother, seated in another chair. Hester spends the night stretched out on the floor. Although Mr. Bolton pleads with his wife to let her go, she is more concerned with the salvation of her daughter's soul than with such earthly consequences as murder. "Oh, He knows! He knows! And if He knows, what matters what men say that I have done to her." (Mrs. Bolton shares this concern for the welfare of the soul, at the expense of the body, with another of Trollope's zealous villains, Aunt Charlotte in _Linda Tressel_.) In the end Hester's half brothers decide that she must be allowed to leave, and after a three-day standoff the gates are unlocked, and she bids goodbye to her parents and leaves. In this scene Mrs. Bolton had outdone even the wife of Bishop Proudie in the Barsetshire novels. Mrs. Proudie stands as a comic figure in comic novels, but there is little comedy about Mrs. Bolton. Her sin is the same as Mrs. Proudie's--an excess of zeal in the cause of religion--but here there is little to laugh at.