“Look at my jacket!” said Dorothy.  It was one of Juliet’s, and she hoped to make her smile.

“Did Paul see you with my clothes on?” she said angrily.

Dorothy started with the pang of hurt that shot through her.  But the compassionate smile on the face of Polwarth, who had just entered, and had heard the last article of the conversation, at once set her right.  For not only was he capable of immediate sympathy with emotion, but of revealing at once that he understood its cause.  Ruth, who had come into the room behind him, second only to her uncle in the insight of love, followed his look by asking Dorothy if she might go to the Old House, as soon as the weather permitted, to fetch some clothes for Mrs. Faber, who had brought nothing with her but what she wore; whereupon Dorothy, partly for leisure to fight her temper, said she would go herself, and went.  But when she returned, she gave the bag to Ruth at the door, and went away without seeing Juliet again.  She was getting tired of her selfishness, she said to herself.  Dorothy was not herself yet perfect in love—­which beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

Faber too had been up all night—­by the bedside of the little Amanda.  She scarcely needed such close attendance, for she slept soundly, and was hardly at all feverish.  Four or five times in the course of the night, he turned down the bed-clothes to examine her body, as if he feared some injury not hitherto apparent.  Of such there was no sign.

In his youth he had occupied himself much with comparative anatomy and physiology.  His predilection for these studies had greatly sharpened his observation, and he noted many things that escaped the eyes of better than ordinary observers.  Amongst other kinds of things to which he kept his eyes open, he was very quick at noting instances of the strange persistency with which Nature perpetuates minute peculiarities, carrying them on from generation to generation.  Occupied with Amanda, a certain imperfection in one of the curves of the outer ear attracted his attention.  It is as rare to see a perfect ear as to see a perfect form, and the varieties of unfinished curves are many; but this imperfection was very peculiar.  At the same time it was so slight, that not even the eye of a lover, none save that of a man of science, alive to minutest indications, would probably have seen it.  The sight of it startled Faber not a little; it was the second instance of the peculiarity that had come to his knowledge.  It gave him a new idea to go upon, and when the child suddenly opened her eyes, he saw another face looking at him out of hers.  The idea then haunted him; and whether it was that it assimilated facts to itself, or that the signs were present, further search afforded what was to him confirmation of the initiatory suspicion.