he was yet capable of
admiring things of altogether inferior quality. What did it mean? Could
it arise from an excess of productive faculty, not yet sufficiently
differenced from the receptive? One could imagine such an excess ready
to seize the poorest molds, flow into them, and endow them for itself
with attributed life and power. He found also that she was familiar with
the modes of thought and expression peculiar to a certain school of
theology--embodiments from which, having done their good, and long
commenced doing their evil, Truth had begun to withdraw itself,
consuming as it withdrew. For the moment the fire ceases to be the life
of the bush in which it appears, the bush will begin to be consumed. At
the same time he could perfectly recognize the influence of Faber upon
her. For not unfrequently, the talk between the curate and his wife
would turn upon some point connected with the unbelief of the land, so
much more active, though but seemingly more extensive than heretofore;
when she would now make a remark, now ask a question, in which the
curate heard the doctor as plainly as if the words had come direct from
his lips: those who did not believe might answer so and so--might refuse
the evidence--might explain the thing differently. But she listened
well, and seemed to understand what they said. The best of her
undoubtedly appeared in her music, in which she was fundamentally far
superior to Helen, though by no means so well trained, taught or
practiced in it; whence Helen had the unspeakable delight, one which
only a humble, large and lofty mind can ever have, of consciously
ministering to the growth of another in the very thing wherein that
other is naturally the superior. The way to the blessedness that is in
music, as to all other blessednesses, lies through weary labors, and the
master must suffer with the disciple; Helen took Juliet like a child,
set her to scales and exercises, and made her practice hours a day.

CHAPTER XX.

AT THE PIANO.

When Faber called on Juliet, the morning after the last interview
recorded, and found where she was gone, he did not doubt she had taken
refuge with her new friends from his importunity, and was at once
confirmed in the idea he had cherished through the whole wakeful night,
that the cause of her agitation was nothing else than the conflict
between her heart and a false sense of duty, born of prejudice and
superstition. She was not willing to send him away,