Juliet had passed a sleepless night, and greatly dreaded the next interview with Faber.  Helen’s invitation, therefore, to pay them a few days’ visit, came to her like a redemption:  in their house she would have protection both from Faber and from herself.  Heartily, with tears in her eyes, she accepted it; and her cordial and grateful readiness placed her yet a step higher in the regard of her new friends.  The acceptance of a favor may be the conferring of a greater.  Quickly, hurriedly, she put up “her bag of needments,” and with a sad, sweet smile of gentle apology, took the curate’s place beside his wife, while he got into the seat behind.

Juliet, having been of late so much confined to the house, could not keep back the tears called forth by the pleasure of the rapid motion through the air, the constant change of scene, and that sense of human story which haunts the mind in passing unknown houses and farms and villages.  An old thatched barn works as directly on the social feeling as the ancient castle or venerable manor-seat; many a simple house will move one’s heart like a poem; many a cottage like a melody.  When at last she caught sight of the great church-tower, she clapped her hands with delight.  There was a place in which to wander and hide! she thought—­in which to find refuge and rest, and coolness and shadow!  Even for Faber’s own sake she would not believe that faith a mere folly which had built such a pile as that!  Surely there was some way of meeting the terrible things he said—­if only she could find it!

“Are you fastidious, Miss Meredith, or willing to do any thing that is honest?” the curate asked rather abruptly, leaning forward from the back seat.

“If ever I was fastidious,” she answered, “I think I am pretty nearly cured.  I should certainly like my work to be so far within my capacity as to be pleasant to me.”

“Then there is no fear,” answered the curate.  “The people who don’t get on, are those that pick and choose upon false principles.  They generally attempt what they are unfit for, and deserve their failures.—­Are you willing to teach little puds and little tongues?”

“Certainly.”

“Tell me what you are able to do?”

“I would rather not.  You might think differently when you came to know me.  But you can ask me any questions you please.  I shan’t hide my knowledge, and I can’t hide my ignorance.”

“Thank you,” said the curate, and leaned back again in his seat.

After luncheon, Helen found to her delight that, although Juliet was deficient enough in the mechanics belonging to both voice and instrument, she could yet sing and play with expression and facility, while her voice was one of the loveliest she had ever heard.  When the curate came home from his afternoon attentions to the ailing of his flock, he was delighted to hear his wife’s report of her gifts.

“Would you mind reading a page or two aloud?” he said to their visitor, after they had had a cup of tea.  “I often get my wife to read to me.”