“But some one will come,” said Juliet, half-rising, as if she would run after her.

“No one will.  But if any one should—­come here, I will show you a place where nobody would find you.”

She helped her to rise, and led her from the room to a door in a rather dark passage.  This she opened, and, striking a light, showed an ordinary closet, with pegs for hanging garments upon.  The sides of it were paneled, and in one of them, not readily distinguishable, was another door.  It opened into a room lighted only by a little window high up in a wall, through whose dusty, cobwebbed panes, crept a modicum of second-hand light from a stair.

“There!” said Dorothy.  “If you should hear any sound before I come back, run in here.  See what a bolt there is to the door.  Mind you shut both.  You can close that shutter over the window too if you like—­only nobody can look in at it without getting a ladder, and there isn’t one about the place.  I don’t believe any one knows of this room but myself.”

Juliet was too miserable to be frightened at the look of it—­which was wretched enough.  She promised not to leave the house, and Dorothy went.  Many times before she returned had Juliet fled from the sounds of imagined approach, and taken refuge in the musty dusk of the room withdrawn.  When at last Dorothy came, she found her in it trembling.

She came, bringing a basket with every thing needful for breakfast.  She had not told her father any thing:  he was too simple, she said to herself, to keep a secret with comfort; and she would risk any thing rather than discovery while yet she did not clearly know what ought to be done.  Her version of the excellent French proverb—­Dans le doute, abstiens-toi—­was, When you are not sure, wait—­which goes a little further, inasmuch as it indicates expectation, and may imply faith.  With difficulty she prevailed upon her to take some tea, and a little bread and butter, feeding her like a child, and trying to comfort her with hope.  Juliet sat on the floor, leaning against the wall, the very picture of despair, white like alabaster, rather than marble—­with a bluish whiteness.  Her look was of one utterly lost.

“We’ll let the fire out now,” said Dorothy; “for the sun is shining in warm, and there had better be no smoke.  The wood is rather scarce too.  I will get you some more, and here are matches:  you can light it again when you please.”

She then made her a bed on the floor with a quantity of wood shavings, and some shawls she had brought, and when she had lain down upon it, kneeled beside her, and covering her face with her hands, tried to pray.  But it seemed as if all the misery of humanity was laid upon her, and God would not speak:  not a sound would come from her throat, till she burst into tears and sobs.  It struck a strange chord in the soul of the wife to hear the maiden weeping over her.  But it was no private trouble, it was