ing but the death from which she now restrained herself,
lest, as Dorothy had taught her, she should deny him the fruits of a
softening heart and returning love. The moment she heard that he sought
another, she would seek Death and assuredly find him. One letter she
would write to leave behind her, and then go. He should see and
understand that the woman he despised for the fault of the girl, was yet
capable of the noblest act of a wife: she would die that he might
live--that it might be well with her husband. Having entertained,
comprehended and settled this idea in her mind, she became quieter.
After this, Dorothy might have spoken without stirring up so angry an
opposition. But it was quite as well she did not know it, and did not
speak.

I have said that Dorothy wondered she did not fall ill. There was a hope
in Juliet's mind of which she had not spoken, but upon which, though
vaguely, she built further hope, and which may have had part in her
physical endurance: the sight of his baby might move the heart of her
husband to pardon her!

But the time, even with the preoccupation of misery, grew very dreary.
She had never had any resources in herself except her music, and even if
here she had had any opportunity of drawing upon that, what is music but
a mockery to a breaking heart? Was music ever born of torture, of
misery? It is only when the cloud of sorrow is sinking in the sun-rays,
that the song-larks awake and ascend. A glory of some sort must fringe
the skirts of any sadness, the light of the sorrowing soul itself must
be shed upon it, and the cloud must be far enough removed to show the
reflected light, before it will yield any of the stuff of which songs
are made. And this light that gathers in song, what is it but hope
behind the sorrow--hope so little recognized as such, that it is often
called despair? It is reviving and not decay that sings even the saddest
of songs.

Juliet had had little consciousness of her own being as an object of
reflection. Joy and sorrow came and went; she had never brooded. Never
until now, had she known any very deep love. Even that she bore her
father had not ripened into the grand love of the woman-child. She
forgot quickly; she hoped easily; she had had some courage, and
naturally much activity; she faced necessity by instinct, and took
almost no thought for the morrow--but this after the fashion of the
birds, not after the fashion required of those who can consider the
bi