done so.  Every book had its own place.  He could—­I speak advisedly—­have laid his hand on any book of at least three hundred of them, in the dark.  While he used them with perfect freedom, and cared comparatively little about their covers, he handled them with a delicacy that looked almost like respect.  He had seen ladies handle books, he said, laughing, to Wingfold, in a fashion that would have made him afraid to trust them with a child.  It was a year after Juliet left the house before he got them by degrees muddled into order again; for it was only as he used them that he would alter their places, putting each, when he had done with it for the moment, as near where it had been before as he could; thus, in time, out of a neat chaos, restoring a useful work-a-day world.

Dorothy’s thoughts were in the meantime much occupied for Juliet.  Now that she was so sadly free, she could do more for her.  She must occupy her old quarters as soon as possible after the workmen had finished.  She thought at first of giving out that a friend in poor health was coming to visit her, but she soon saw that would either involve lying or lead to suspicion, and perhaps discovery, and resolved to keep her presence in the house concealed from the outer world as before.  But what was she to do with respect to Lisbeth?  Could she trust her with the secret?  She certainly could not trust Amanda.  She would ask Helen to take the latter for a while, and do her best to secure the silence of the former.

She so represented the matter to Lisbeth as to rouse her heart in regard to it even more than her wonder.  But her injunctions to secrecy were so earnest, that the old woman was offended.  She was no slip of a girl, she said, who did not know how to hold her tongue.  She had had secrets to keep before now, she said; and in proof of her perfect trustworthiness, was proceeding to tell some of them, when she read her folly in Dorothy’s fixed regard, and ceased.

“Lisbeth,” said her mistress, “you have been a friend for sixteen years, and I love you; but if I find that you have given the smallest hint even that there is a secret in the house, I solemnly vow you shall not be another night in it yourself, and I shall ever after think of you as a wretched creature who periled the life of a poor, unhappy lady rather than take the trouble to rule her own tongue.”

Lisbeth trembled, and did hold her tongue, in spite of the temptation to feel herself for just one instant the most important person in Glaston.

As the time went on, Juliet became more fretful, and more confiding.  She was never cross with Ruth—­why, she could not have told; and when she had been cross to Dorothy, she was sorry for it.  She never said she was sorry, but she tried to make up for it.  Her husband had not taught her the virtue, both for relief and purification, that lies in the acknowledgment of wrong.  To take up blame that is our own, is to wither the very root of it.