“Not thoroughly.  I know that only too well, for I at all events am selfish, Helen.”

“I don’t see it; but if you are, you know it, and hate it, and strive against it.  I do not think he knows it, even when he says that every body is selfish.  Only, what better way to get rid of it than to love and marry?”

“Or to confirm it,” said Wingfold thoughtfully.

“I shouldn’t wonder a bit if they’re married already!” said Helen.

She was not far from wrong, although not quite right.  Already Faber had more than hinted at a hurried marriage, as private as could be compassed.  It was impossible of course, to be married at church.  That would be to cast mockery on the marriage itself, as well as on what Faber called his beliefs.  The objection was entirely on Faber’s side, but Juliet did not hint at the least difference of feeling in the matter.  She let every thing take its way now.

At length having, in a neighboring town, arranged all the necessary preliminaries, Faber got one of the other doctors in Glaston to attend to his practice for three weeks, and went to take a holiday.  Juliet left Owlkirk the same day.  They met, were lawfully married, and at the close of the three weeks, returned together to the doctor’s house.

The sort of thing did not please Glaston society, and although Faber was too popular as a doctor to lose position by it, Glaston was slow in acknowledging that it knew there was a lady at the head of his house.  Mrs. Wingfold and Miss Drake, however, set their neighbors a good example, and by degrees there came about a dribbling sort of recognition.  Their social superiors stood the longest aloof—­chiefly because the lady had been a governess, and yet had behaved so like one of themselves; they thought it well to give her a lesson.  Most of them, however, not willing to offend the leading doctor in the place, yielded and called.  Two elderly spinsters and Mrs. Ramshorn did not.  The latter declared she did not believe they were married.  Most agreed they were the handsomest couple ever seen in that quarter, and looked all right.

Juliet returned the calls made upon her, at the proper retaliatory intervals, and gradually her mode of existence fell into routine.  The doctor went out every day, and was out most of the day, while she sat at home and worked or read.  She had to amuse herself, and sometimes found life duller than when she had to earn her bread—­when, as she went from place to place, she might at any turn meet Paul upon Ruber or Niger.  Already the weary weed of the commonplace had begun to show itself in the marriage garden—­a weed which, like all weeds, requires only neglect for perfect development, when it will drive the lazy Eve who has never made her life worth living, to ask whether life be worth having.  She was not a great reader.  No book had ever yet been to her a well-spring of life; and such books as she liked best it was perhaps just as well that