hould make of itself the merest slave
incapable of will of any sort! Is it a wrong to compel His creature to
soar aloft into the ether of its origin, and find its deepest, its only
true self? It is God's knowing choice of life against man's ignorant
choice of death.

But Juliet knew nothing of such a region of strife in the human soul.
She had no suspicion what an awful swamp lay around the prison of her
self-content--no, self-discontent--in which she lay chained. To her the
one good and desirable thing was the love and company of Paul Faber. He
was her saviour, she said to herself, and the woman who could not love
and trust and lean upon such a heart of devotion and unselfishness as
his, was unworthy of the smallest of his thoughts. He was nobility,
generosity, justice itself! If she sought to lay her faults bare to him,
he would but fold her to his bosom to shut them out from her own vision!
He would but lay his hand on the lips of confession, and silence them as
unbelievers in his perfect affection! He was better than the God the
Wingfolds and Drakes believed in, with whom humiliation was a condition
of acceptance!

She told the Drakes that, for the air of Owlkirk, she was going to
occupy her old quarters with Mrs. Puckridge during the holidays. They
were not much surprised, for they had remarked a change in her manner,
and it was not long unexplained: for, walking from the Old House
together one evening rather late, they met her with the doctor in a
little frequented part of the park. When she left them, they knew she
would not return; and her tears betrayed that she knew it also.

Meantime the negotiation for the purchase of the Old House of Glaston
was advancing with slow legal sinuosity. Mr. Drake had offered the full
value of the property, and the tender seemed to be regarded not
unfavorably. But his heart and mind were far more occupied with the
humbler property he had already secured in the town: that was now to be
fortified against the incursions of the river, with its attendant fevers
and agues. A survey of the ground had satisfied him that a wall at a
certain point would divert a great portion of the water, and this wall
he proceeded at once to build. He hoped in the end to inclose the ground
altogether, or at least to defend it at every assailable point, but
there were many other changes imperative, with difficulties such that
they could not all be coped with at once. The worst of the cottages must
be p