ad been, but as if
there really were such a person as Jesus Christ. The idea of Him ruled
potent in the lives of the two, filling heart and brain and hands and
feet: how could she help a certain awe before it, such as she had never
felt!

Suddenly one day the suspicion awoke in her mind, that the reason why
they asked her no questions, put out no feelers after discovery
concerning her, must be that Dorothy had told them every thing: if it
was, never again would she utter word good or bad to one whose very
kindness, she said to herself, was betrayal! The first moment therefore
she saw Polwarth alone, unable to be still an instant with her doubt
unsolved, she asked him, "with sick assay," but point-blank, whether he
knew why she was in hiding from her husband.

"I do not know, ma'am," he answered.

"Miss Drake told you nothing?" pursued Juliet.

"Nothing more than I knew already: that she could not deny when I put it
to her."

"But how did you know any thing?" she almost cried out, in a sudden rush
of terror as to what the public knowledge of her might after all be.

"If you will remember, ma'am," Polwarth replied, "I told you, the first
time I had the pleasure of speaking to you, that it was by observing and
reasoning upon what I observed, that I knew you were alive and at the
Old House. But it may be some satisfaction to you to see how the thing
took shape in my mind."

Thereupon he set the whole process plainly before her.

Fresh wonder, mingled with no little fear, laid hold upon Juliet. She
felt not merely as if he could look into her, but as if he had only to
look into himself to discover all her secrets.

"I should not have imagined you a person to trouble himself to that
extent with other people's affairs," she said, turning away.

"So far as my service can reach, the things of others are also mine,"
replied Polwarth, very gently.

"But you could not have had the smallest idea of serving me when you
made all those observations concerning me."

"I had long desired to serve your husband, ma'am. Never from curiosity
would I have asked a single question about you or your affairs. But what
came to me I was at liberty to understand if I could, and use for lawful
ends if I might."

Juliet was silent. She dared hardly think, lest the gnome should see her
very thoughts in their own darkness. Yet she yielded to one more urgent
question that kept pushing to get out. She tried to say the words
without thinkin