Still no signs of the Rev. Guy Cattacomb. The morning following the night told of in the last chapter rose bright and sunny. Miss Blake rose with it, her energetic mind full of thought.

"I wonder how I am to begin to keep house?" said Lucy with a laugh, when she got up from the breakfast table, her cheeks as bright as the pink summer muslin she wore. "Do I go into the kitchen, Theresa?"

"You go with the cook to the larder," replied Theresa, gravely. "See what provisions remain in it from yesterday, and give your orders accordingly. Shall I go with you this morning, Lady Andinnian?"

"I wish you would! I wish you\'d put me in the way of it. In Paris, when I was going to be married, mamma regretted she had not shown me more of housekeeping at home."

"You have, I believe, a careful and honest cook: and that is a great thing for an inexperienced mistress," said Miss Blake.

"As if cooks were ever dishonest in the country!" cried Sir Karl, laughing--and it was the first laugh Miss Blake had heard from his lips. "You must go to your grand London servants for that--making their perquisites out of everything, and feeding their friends and the policeman!"

"And then, Karl, when I come back, you will take me about everywhere, won\'t you?" whispered Lucy, leaning fondly over his shoulder as Miss Blake went on. "I want to see all about the grounds."

He nodded and let his cheek rest for a moment against hers. "Go and order your roast beef. And--Lucy!"

His manner had changed to seriousness. He turned in his chair to face her, his brow flushing as he took her hands.

"You will not be extravagant, Lucy--" his voice sinking to a whisper lower than hers. "When I told you of that--that trouble, which had fallen upon me and might fall deeper, I said that it would cost me a large portion of my income. You remember?"

"Oh Karl! do you think I could forget? We will live as quietly and simply as you please. It is all the same to me."

"Thank you, my dear wife."

Theresa stood at the open hall door, looking from it while she waited. "I was thinking," she said, when Lady Andinnian\'s step was heard, "that it really might be cheaper in the end if you took a regular housekeeper, Lucy, as you are so inexperienced. It would save you a great deal of trouble."

"The trouble\'s nothing, Theresa; and I should like to learn. I would not think of a housekeeper. I should be afraid of her."

"Oh, very well. As you please, of course. But when you get your whole staff of servants, the house full of them, the controlling of the supplies for so many will very much embarrass you."

"But we don\'t mean to have our house full of servants, Theresa. We do not care to set up on a grand scale, either of us. Just about as papa and mamma live, will be enough for us indoors."

"Nonsense," said Miss Blake.

"We must have a coachman--Karl thinks he shall take on Sir Joseph\'s; the man has asked to come--and, I suppose, one footman to help Hewitt, and a groom. That\'s all. I think we have enough maids now."

"You should consider that Sir Karl\'s income is a large one, Lucy," spoke Miss Blake in a tone of lofty reproach. "It is absurd to take your papa\'s scale of living as a guide for yours."

"But Sir Karl does not mean to spend his income: he has a reason for saving it."

"Oh that\'s another thing," said Miss Blake. "What is his reason?"

The young Lady Andinnian could have punished her rebellious tongue. She had spoken the hasty words "he has a reason for saving it" in the heat of argument, without thought. What right, either as a wife or a prudent woman, had she to allow allusion to it to escape her lips? Her rejoinder was given slowly and calmly.

"My husband is quite right not to begin by spending all his income, Theresa. We should both of us think it needless extravagance. Is this the kitchen? Let us go in here first. I must get acquainted with all my places and people."

The business transacted, Lucy went out with Karl. Theresa watched them on to the lawn and thence round the house, Lucy in her broad-brimmed straw hat, and her arm within her husband\'s. Miss Blake then dressed herself and walked rapidly to St. Jerome\'s. Some faint hope animated her that Mr. Cattacomb might have arrived, and be already inaugurating the morning service. But no. St. Jerome\'s was closely shut, and no Mr. Cattacomb was there.

She retraced her steps, lingering to rob the hedges of a wild honeysuckle or a dog-rose. This non-arrival of Mr. Cattacomb began to trouble her, and she could not imagine why, if he were prevented coming, he had not written to say so. Reaching the Maze, Miss Blake woke up from these thoughts with quite a start of surprise: for the gate was open and a woman servant stood there, holding colloquy with the butcher\'s boy on horseback: a young man in a blue frock, no hat, and a basket on his arm. A middle-aged and very respectable looking servant, but somewhat old-fashioned in her appearance: a spare figure straight up and down, in a black-and-white cotton gown and white muslin cap tied with black ribbon strings. In her hand was a dish with some meat on it, which she had just received from the basket, and she appeared to be reproaching the boy on the score of the last joint\'s toughness.

"This hot weather one can\'t keep nothing properly," said the boy, in apology. "I was to ask for the book, please, ma\'am."

"The book!" returned the woman. "Why I meant to have brought it out. Wait there, and I\'ll get it."

The boy, having perhaps the spirit of restlessness upon him, backed his steed, and turned him round and round in the road like a horse in a mill. Miss Blake saw her opportunity and slipped in unseen. Gliding along the path, she concealed herself behind a huge tree-trunk near the hedge, until the servant should have come and gone again. Miss Blake soon caught sight of her skirts amid the trees of the maze.

"Here\'s the book," said she to the boy. "Ask your master to make it up for the month, and I\'ll pay." And shutting and locking the gate, she retreated into the maze again and disappeared.

When people do covert things in a hurry, they can\'t expect to have all their senses about them, and Miss Blake had probably forgotten that she should be locked in. However--here she was in the position, and must make the best of it.

First of all, she went round the path, intending to see where it led to. It was fenced in by the garden wall, the high hedge and shrubs on one side, by the trees of the maze on the other. Suddenly she came to what looked like a low vaulted passage built in the maze, which probably communicated with the house: but she could not tell. Its door was fast, and Miss Blake could see nothing.

Pursuing her way along the walk, it brought her round to the entrance gate again, and she remembered Tom Pepp\'s words about the path going round and round and leading to nowhere. Miss Blake was not one to be daunted. She had come in to look about her, and she meant to do it. She plunged into the maze.

Again had she cause to recall Master Pepp\'s account,--"Once get into that there maze and you\'d never get out again without the clue." Miss Blake began to fear there was only too much truth in it. For a full hour in reality, and it seemed to her like two hours, did she wander about and wander again. She was in the maze and could not get out of it.

She stood against the back of a tree, her face turning hot and cold. It took a great deal to excite that young woman\'s pulses: but she did not like the position in which she had placed herself.

She must try again. Forward thither, backward hither, round and about, in and out. No; no escape; no clue; no opening: nothing but the same interminable trees and the narrow paths so exactly like one another.

"What will become of me?" gasped Miss Blake.

At that moment a voice very near rose upon her ear--the voice of the servant she had seen. "Yes, ma\'am, I\'ll do it after dinner."

Unconsciously Miss Blake had wandered to the confines of the maze that were close on the house. A few steps further and she could peep out of her imprisonment.

A small, low, pretty-gabled house of red brick. A sitting-room window, large and thrown open, faced Miss Blake; the porch entrance, of which she could get a slanting glimpse, fronted a grass-plat, surrounded by most beautiful flower-beds, with a greenhouse at the end. It was a snug, compact spot, the whole shut in by a high laurel hedge. On the grass stood the woman servant, spreading some bits of linen to dry: Miss Blake made them out to be cambric handkerchiefs: her mistress had probably been speaking to her from the porch, and the answer was what she heard. An old man, with either a slight hump on his back or a dreadful stoop, was bending over a distant flower-bed. He wore a wide, yellow straw hat, and a smock-frock similar to that of the butcher\'s boy, only the latter\'s was blue and the old man\'s white. His hair was grey and he appeared to be toothless: but in his prime he must have been tall and powerful. Miss Blake made her comments.

"What an extraordinary solitude for a young person to live in! But what choice flowers those look to be! That toothless old man must be the gardener! he looks too aged and infirm for his work. Why
does she live here? There must be more in it than meets the eye. Perhaps----"

The soliloquy was arrested. The door of the sitting-room opened, and a young lady entered. Crossing to the window, she stood looking at something on the table underneath, in full view of Miss Blake. A fair girl, with a delicate face, soft damask cheeks, blue eyes, and hair that gleamed like threads of light gold.

"Good gracious! how lovely she is!" was Miss Blake\'s involuntary thought. Could this young girl be Mrs. Grey?

The young lady left the window again. The next minute the keys of a piano were touched. A prelude was played softly, and then there rose a verse of those lines in the "Vicar of Wakefield" that you all know so well, the voice of the singer exceedingly melodious and simple:


"When lovely woman stoops to folly,
And finds too late that men betray----"


Miss Blake had never in her life cared for the song, but it bore now a singular charm. Every word was distinct, and she listened to the end. A curious speculation crossed her.

Was this young girl singing the lines in character? "Heaven help her then!" cried Miss Blake--for she was not all hardness.

But how was she, herself, to get away? She might remain there unsought for ever. There was nothing for it but boldly showing herself. And, as the servant was then coming back across the lawn with some herbs which she had apparently been to gather, Miss Blake wound out of the maze, and presented herself before the woman\'s astonished eyes.

She made the best excuse she could. Had wandered inside the gate, attracted by the mass of beautiful trees, and lost herself amidst them. After a pause of wondering consideration, the servant understood how it must have been--that she had got in during her temporary absence from the gate when she went to fetch the butcher\'s book; and she knew what a long while she must have been there.

"I\'ll let you out," she said. "It\'s a pity you came in."

Very rapidly the woman walked on through the maze, Miss Blake following her. There were turnings and twistings, amid which the latter strove to catch some clue to the route. In vain. One turning, one path seemed just like another.

"Does your mistress live quite alone here?" she asked of the servant.

"Yes, ma\'am," was the reply, more civilly spoken--for, that the servant had been at first much put out by the occurrence, her manner testified. "She\'s all alone, except for ............