and yet she dared
not accept him. Her behavior had certainly revealed any thing but
indifference, and therefore must not make him miserable. At the same
time if it was her pleasure to avoid him, what chance had he of seeing
her alone at the rectory? The thought made him so savage that for a
moment he almost imagined his friend had been playing him false.

"I suppose he thinks every thing fair in religion, as well as in love
and war!" he said to himself. "It's a mighty stake, no doubt--a soul
like Juliet's!"

He laughed scornfully. It was but a momentary yielding to the temptation
of injustice, however, for his conscience told him at once that the
curate was incapable of any thing either overbearing or underhand. He
would call on her as his patient, and satisfy himself at once how things
were between them. At best they had taken a bad turn.

He judged it better, however, to let a day or two pass. When he did
call, he was shown into the drawing-room, where he found Helen at the
piano, and Juliet having a singing-lesson from her. Till then he had
never heard Juliet's song voice. A few notes of it dimly reached him as
he approached the room, and perhaps prepared him for the impression he
was about to receive: when the door opened, like a wind on a more mobile
sea, it raised sudden tumult in his soul. Not once in his life had he
ever been agitated in such fashion; he knew himself as he had never
known himself. It was as if some potent element, undreamed of before,
came rushing into the ordered sphere of his world, and shouldered its
elements from the rhythm of their going. It was a full contralto, with
pathos in the very heart of it, and it seemed to wrap itself round his
heart like a serpent of saddest splendor, and press the blood from it up
into his eyes. The ladies were too much occupied to hear him announced,
or note his entrance, as he stood by the door, absorbed, entranced.

Presently he began to feel annoyed, and proceeded thereupon to take
precautions with himself. For Juliet was having a lesson of the severest
kind, in which she accepted every lightest hint with the most heedful
attention, and conformed thereto with the sweetest obedience; whence it
came that Faber, the next moment after fancying he had screwed his
temper to stoic pitch, found himself passing from displeasure to
indignation, and thence almost to fury, as again and again some
exquisite tone, that went thrilling through all his being, discovering