In regard to Mrs.Bolton herself, great efforts were made.
Her husband condescended to beg her to consent on this one occasion to appear among the Philistines.

But as the time came nearer she became more and more firm in her resolution.

'You shall not touch pitch and not be defiled,' she said.

'You cannot serve God and Mammon.' When the old man tried to show her that there was no question of Mammon here, she evaded him, as she always did on such occasions, either by a real or simulated deficiency of consequent intelligence.

She regarded John Caldigate as being altogether unregenerate, and therefore a man of the world,--and therefore a disciple of Mammon.