“I can trust you, Miss Drake,” he resumed.  “If I did not, I should have at once acquainted the authorities with my suspicions; for, you will observe, you are hiding from a community a fact which it has a right to know.  But I have faith enough in you to believe that you are only waiting a fit time, and have good reasons for what you do.  If I can give you any help, I am at your service.”

He took off his big hat, and turned away into the house.

Dorothy stood fixed for a moment or two longer, then walked slowly away, with her eyes on the ground.  Before she reached the Old House, she had made up her mind to tell Polwarth as much as she could without betraying Juliet’s secret, and to ask him to talk to her, for which she would contrive an opportunity.

For some time she had been growing more anxious every day.  No sign of change showed in any quarter; no way opened through the difficulties that surrounded them, while these were greatly added to by the likelihood appearing that another life was on its way into them.  What was to be done?  How was she in her ignorance so to guard the hopeless wife that motherhood might do something to console her?  She had two lives upon her hands, and did indeed want counsel.  The man who knew their secret already—­the minor prophet, she had heard the curate call him—­might at least help her to the next step she must take.

Juliet’s mental condition was not at all encouraging.  She was often ailing and peevish, behaving as if she owed Dorothy grudge instead of gratitude.  And indeed to herself Dorothy would remark that if nothing more came out of it than seemed likely now, Juliet would be under no very ponderous obligation to her.  She found it more and more difficult to interest her in any thing.  After Othello she did not read another play.  Nothing pleased her but to talk about her husband.  If Dorothy had seen him, Juliet had endless questions to put to her about him; and when she had answered as many of them as she could, she would put them all over again afresh.  On one occasion when Dorothy could not say she believed he was, when she saw him, thinking about his wife, Juliet went into hysterics.  She was growing so unmanageable that if Dorothy had not partially opened her mind to Polwarth, she must at last have been compelled to give her up.  The charge was wearing her out; her strength was giving way, and her temper growing so irritable that she was ashamed of herself—­and all without any good to Juliet.  Twice she hinted at letting her husband know where she was, but Juliet, although, on both occasions, she had a moment before been talking as if Dorothy alone prevented her from returning to him, fell on her knees in wild distress, and entreated her to bear with her.  At the smallest approach of the idea toward actuality, the recollection rushed scorching back—­of how she had implored him, how she had humbled herself soul and body before him, how he had turned from her with loathing, would not put forth a hand to lift her from destruction and to restore her to peace, had left her naked on the floor, nor once returned “to ask the spotted princess how she fares”—­and she shrunk with agony from any real thought of again supplicating his mercy.