In her soul began to spring a respect for her host and hostess, such as she had never felt toward God or man.  When, despite of many revulsions it was a little established, it naturally went beyond them in the direction of that which they revered.  The momentary hush that preceded the name of our Lord, and the smile that so often came with it; the halo, as it were, which in their feeling surrounded Him; the confidence of closest understanding, the radiant humility with which they approached His idea; the way in which they brought the commonest question side by side with the ideal of Him in their minds, considering the one in the light of the other, and answering it thereby; the way in which they took all He said and did on the fundamental understanding that His relation to God was perfect, but His relation to men as yet an imperfect, endeavoring relation, because of their distance from His Father; these, with many another outcome of their genuine belief, began at length to make her feel, not merely as if there had 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.