Juliet’s heart got in the way, and she could not answer him.  She felt much as a ghost, wandering through a house, might feel, if suddenly addressed by the name she had borne in the old days, while yet she was clothed in the garments of the flesh.  Could it be that this man led such a retired life that, although living so near Glaston, and seeing so many at his gate, he had yet never heard that she had passed from the ken of the living?  Or could it be that Dorothy had betrayed her?  She stood quaking.  The situation was strange.  Before her was a man who did not seem to know that what he knew concerning her was a secret from all the world besides!  And with that she had a sudden insight into the consequence of the fact of her existence coming to her husband’s knowledge:  would it not add to his contempt and scorn to know that she was not even dead?  Would he not at once conclude that she had been contriving to work on his feelings, that she had been speculating on his repentance, counting upon and awaiting such a return of his old fondness, as would make him forget all her faults, and prepare him to receive her again with delight?—­But she must answer the creature!  Ill could she afford to offend him!  But what was she to say?  She had utterly forgotten what he had said to her.  She stood staring at him, unable to speak.  It was but for a few moments, but they were long as minutes.  And as she gazed, it seemed as if the strange being in the trench had dug his way up from the lower parts of the earth, bringing her secret with him, and come to ask her questions.  What an earthy yet unearthly look he had!  Almost for the moment she believed the ancient rumors of other races than those of mankind, that shared the earth with them, but led such differently conditioned lives, that, in the course of ages, only a scanty few of the unblending natures crossed each other’s path, to stand astare in mutual astonishment.

Polwarth went on digging, nor once looked up.  After a little while he resumed, in the most natural way, speaking as if he had known her well: 

“Mr. Drake and I were talking, some weeks ago, about a certain curious little old-fashioned flower in my garden at the back of the lodge.  He asked me if I could spare him a root of it.  I told him I could spare him any thing he would like to have, but that I would gladly give him every flower in my garden, roots and all, if he would but let me dig three yards square in his garden at the Old House, and have all that came up of itself for a year.”

He paused again.  Juliet neither spoke nor moved.  He dug rather feebly for a gnome, with panting, asthmatic breath.