But till that time should come the wife of John Caldigate would be nothing to her.
She was not content with thinking and resolving that it should be so, but she declared her intention in so many words to her daughter.

For poor Hester, though she was proud of her husband, this was in truth a miserable day.

Could she have been induced to separate herself altogether from her mother on the previous night, or even on that morning, it would have been better, but there was with her that customary longing for a last word of farewell which has often made so many of us wretched.

And then there was a feeling that, as she was giving herself away in marriage altogether in opposition to her mother's counsels, on that very account she owed to her more attached and increased observance.

Therefore, she had arranged with her husband that when she returned from the banquet to prepare herself for her journey, a longer absence than usual should be allowed to her;--so that she might be taken back to Chesterton, and might thus see her mother the last after saying farewell to all the others.