The morning sun had chased away the dew on the grass, but the
hedge-rows were giving out their fragrance, and the lark and blackbird sang in the trees. Miss Blake was returning from early service at St. Jerome\'s; or, as St. Jerome people called it, Matins.

In spite of the nearly sleepless night she had passed, Miss Blake looked well. Her superabundance of hair, freshly washed up with its cunning cosmetics and adorned to perfection, gleamed as if so many golden particles of dust were shining on it: her morning robe was of light muslin, and becoming as fashion could make it. It was very unusual for Miss Blake to get little sleep: she was of too equable a temperament to lie awake: but the previous night\'s revelation of iniquity had disturbed her in no common degree, and her head had ached when she rose. The headache was passing now, and she felt quite ready for breakfast. A task lay before her that day: the disclosure to Lady Andinnian. It was all cut and dried: how she should make it and when she should make it: even the very words of it were already framed.

She would not so much as turn her eyes on the gate of the Maze: had she been on that side of the road she would have caught up her flounces as she passed it. Never, willingly, would she soil her shoes with that side of the way again by choice--the place had a brand on it. It was quite refreshing to turn her eyes on Clematis Cottage, sheltering the respectable single bachelor who lived there.

Turning her eyes on the cottage, she turned them on the bachelor as well. Mr. Smith in a light morning coat, and his arm as usual in a black sling, was out of doors amidst the rose trees on the little lawn, gazing at one of them through his green spectacles. Miss Blake stopped as he saluted her, and good mornings were exchanged.

"I am no judge of flowers," he said, "have not lived among them enough for that; but it appears to me that this rose, just come out, is a very rare and beautiful specimen."

Obeying the evident wish--given in manner alone, not in words--that she should go in and look at the rose, Miss Blake entered. It was a tea-rose of exquisite tint and sweetness. Miss Blake was warm in her admiration; she had not noticed any exactly like it at the Court. Before she could stop the sacrilege Mr. Smith had opened his penknife, cut off the rose, and was presenting it to her.

"Oh, how could you!" she exclaimed. "It was so beautiful here, in your garden."

"Madam, it will be more beautiful there," he rejoined, as she began to put it in her waistband.

"I should be very sorry, but that I see other buds will soon be out."

"Yes, by to-morrow. Earth dots not deal out her flowers to us with a niggardly hand."

Accompanying the resolution Miss Blake had come to the previous evening and perfected in the night--in her eyes a very righteous and proper resolution; namely, to disclose what she knew to Lady Andinnian--accompanying this, I say, was an undercurrent of determination to discover as many particulars of the ill-savoured matter as she possibly could discover. Standing at this moment on Mr. Smith\'s grass-plat, that gentleman beside her and the gates of the Maze in full view opposite, an idea struck Miss Blake that perhaps he knew something of the affair.

She began to question him. Lightly and apparently carelessly, interspersed with observations about the flowers, she turned the conversation on the Maze, asking this, and remarking that.

"Lonely it must be for Mrs. Grey? Oh, yes. How long has she lived there, Mr. Smith?"

"She came--let me see. Shortly, I think, before Mrs. Andinnian\'s death."

"Ah, yes. At the time Sir Karl was staying here."

"Was Sir Karl staying here? By the way, yes, I think he was."

Miss Blake, toying with a spray of the flourishing clematis, happened to look suddenly at Mr. Smith as he gave the answer, and saw his glance turned covertly on her through his green glasses. "He knows all about it," she thought, "and is screening Sir Karl. That last answer, the pretended non-remembrance, was an evasion. Men invariably hold by one another in matters of this kind. Just for a moment there was a silence.

"Mr. Smith, you may trust me," she then said in a low tone. "I fancy that you and I both know pretty well who it was brought the lady here and why she lives in that seclusion. But I could never have believed it of Sir Karl Andinnian."

Mr. Smith in his surprise--and it looked like very genuine
surprise--took off his glasses and gazed at Miss Blake without them. He had rather fine brown eyes, she noticed. Not a word spoke he.

"You wonder that I should speak of this, Mr. Smith--I see that."

"I don\'t understand you, ma\'am, and that\'s the truth."

"Oh, well, I suppose you will not understand. Sir Karl ought to be ashamed of himself."

Whether it was her tart tone that suddenly enlightened Mr. Smith, or whether he had but been pretending before, there could be no mistake that he caught her meaning now. He put on his green spectacles with a conscious laugh.

"Hush," said he, making believe playfully to hide his face. "We are content, you know, Miss Blake, to ignore these things."

"Yes, I do know it, dear sir: it is the way of the world. But they cannot be ignored in the sight of Heaven."

The striking of nine o\'clock inside the house reminded Miss Blake that the morning was getting on, and that she had best make haste if she wanted any breakfast. Mr. Smith held the gate open for her, and shook her offered hand. She stepped onwards, feeling that a mutual, if silent, understanding had been established between them--that they shared the disgraceful secret.

Had Miss Blake wanted confirmation in her belief, this admission of Mr. Smith\'s would have established it. But she did not. She was as sure of the fact as though an angel had revealed it to her. The sight of her own good eyes, the hearing of her true ears, and the exercise of her keen common sense had established it too surely.

"My task lies all plain before me," she murmured. "It is a disagreeable one, and may prove a thankless one, but I will not shrink from it. Who am I that I should turn aside from an appointed duty? That it has been appointed me, events show. I have been guided in this by a higher power than my own."

An appointed duty! Perhaps Miss Blake thought she had been "appointed" to watch the Maze gates in the shade of the dark night, to track the private steps of her unsuspicious host, Karl Andinnian! There is no sophistry in this world like self-sophistry; nothing else so deceives the human heart: more especially when it is hidden under a guise of piety.

Miss Blake found her opportunity in the course of the morning. A shade of pity crossed her for the happiness she was about to mar, as she saw the husband and wife out together after breakfast, amid the flowers. Now Lucy\'s arm entwined fondly in his, now tripping by his side, now calling his attention to some rare or sweet blossom, as Mr. Smith had called Miss Blake\'s in the morning, went they. In Lucy\'s bright face, as she glanced perpetually at her lord and husband, there was so much of love, so much of trust: and in his, Sir Karl\'s, there was a whole depth of apparent tenderness for her.

"Men were deceivers ever," angrily cried Miss Blake, recalling a line of the old ballad. "It\'s enough to make one sick. But I am sorry for Lucy; it will be a dreadful blow. How I wish it could be inflicted on him instead of her! In a measure it will fall on him--for of course Lucy will take active steps."

Later, when Sir Karl, as it chanced, had gone over to Basham, and Lucy was in her pretty little dressing room, writing to some girl friend, Miss Blake seized on the opportunity. Shutting herself in with Lady Andinnian, she made the communication to her. She told it with as much gentle consideration as possible, very delicately, and, in fact, rather obscurely. At first Lady Andinnian did not understand, could not understand; and when she was made to understand, her burning face flashed forth its indignation, and she utterly refused to believe.

Miss Blake only expected this. She was very soothing and tender.

"Sit down, Lucy," she said. "Listen. On my word of honour, I would not have imparted this miserable tale to inflict on you pain so bitter, but that I saw it must be done. For your sake, and in the interests of everything that\'s right and just and seemly, it would not have done to suffer you to remain in ignorance, a blind victim to the dastardly deceit practised on you by your husband."

"He could not so deceive me, Theresa; he could not deceive any one," she burst forth passionately.

"My dear, I only ask you to listen. You can then judge for yourself. Do not take my word that it is, or must be, so. Hear the facts, and then use your own common sense. Alas, Lucy, there can be no mistake: but for knowing that, should I have spoken, think you? It is, unfortunately, as true as heaven."

From the beginning to the end, Miss Blake told her tale. She spoke out without reticence now. Sitting beside Lucy on the sofa, and holding her hands in hers with a warm and loving clasp, she went over it all. The mystery that appeared to encompass this young lady, living alone at the Maze in strict seclusion with her two old servants, who were man and wife, she spoke of first as an introduction. She said how curiously it had attracted her attention, unaccountably to herself at the time, but that now she knew a divine inspiration had guided her to the instinct. She avowed how she had got in, and that it was done purposely; and that she had seen the girl, who was called Mrs. Grey, and was "beautiful as an angel," and heard her sing the characteristic song (which might well indeed have been written of her), "When lovely woman stoops to folly." Next, she described Sir Karl\'s secret visits; the key he let himself in with, taken from his pocket; the familiar and affectionate words interchanged between him and the girl, who on the second occasion had come to the gate to wait for him. She told Lucy that she had afterwards had corroborative evidence from Mr. Smith, the agent: he appeared to know all about it, to take it as a common matter of course, and to be content to ignore it after the custom of the world. She said that Sir Karl had brought Mrs. Grey to the Maze during the time he was staying at Foxwood in attendance on his sick mother: and she asked Lucy to recall the fact of his prolonged sojourn here, of his unwillingness to leave it and rejoin her, his wife; and of the very evident desire he had had to keep her altogether from Foxwood. In short, as Miss Blake put the matter--and every syllable she spoke did she believe to be strictly true and unexaggerated--it was simply impossible for the most unwilling listener not to be convinced.

Lady Andinnian was satisfied: and it was as her death-blow. Truth itself could not have appeared more plain and certain. After the first outburst of indignation, she had sat very calm and quiet, listening silently. Trifles excite the best of us, but in a great calamity heart and self alike shrink into stillness. Save that she had turned pale as death, there was no sign.

"Lucy, my poor Lucy, forgive me! I would have spared you if I could: but I believe the task of telling you was laid on me."

"Thank you, yes; I suppose it was right to tell me, Theresa," came the mechanical answer from the quivering lips.

"My dear, what will be your course? You cannot remain here, his wife."

"Would you please let me be alone, now, Theresa? I do not seem to be able to think yet collectedly."

The door closed on Miss Blake, and Lady Andinnian bolted it after her. She bolted the other two doors, so as to make sure of being alone. Then the abandonment began. Kneeling on the carpet, her head buried on the sofa pillow, she lay realizing the full sense of the awful shock. It shook her to the centre. Oh, how dreadful it was! She had so loved Karl, so believed in him: she had believed that man rarely loved a maiden and then a wife as Karl had loved her. This, then, must have been the secret trouble that was upon him!--which had all but induced him to break off his marriage! So she reasoned, and supposed she reasoned correctly. All parts of the supposition, had she thought them well out, might not perhaps have fitted-in to one another: but in a distress such as this, no woman--no, nor man either--is capable of working out problems logically. She assumed that the intimacy must have been going on for years: in all probability long before he knew her.

An hour or so of this painful indulgence, and then Lady Andinnian rose from the floor and sat down to think, as well as she could think, what her course should be. She was truly religious, though perhaps she knew it not. Theresa Blake was ostensibly so, and very much so in her own belief: but the difference was wide. The one had the real gold, the other but the base coin washed over. She, Lucy, strove to think and to see what would be right and best to do; for herself, for her misguided husband, and in the sight of God.

She sat and thought it out, perhaps for another hour. Aglaé came to the door to say luncheon was served, but Lady Andinnian said Miss Blake was to be told that she had a headache and should not take any. To make a scandal and leave her husband\'s home--as Theresa seemed to have hinted--would have gone well nigh to kill her with the shame and anguish it would entail. And oh, she hoped, she trusted, that her good father and mother, who had yielded to her love for Karl and so sanctioned the marriage, might never, never know of this. She lifted her imploring eyes and hands to Heaven in prayer that it might be kept from them. She prayed that she might be enabled to do what was right, and to bear: to bear silently and patiently, no living being, save Sir Karl, knowing what she had to endure.

For, while she was praying for the way to be made clear before her and for strength to walk in it, however thorny it might be, an idea had dawned upon her that this matter might possibly be kept from the world,--might be held sacred between herself and Sir Karl. Could she? could she continue to live on at the Court, bearing in patient silence--nay, in impatient--the cruel torment, the sense of insult? And yet, if she did not remain, how would it be possible to conceal it all from her father and mother? The very indecision seemed well nigh to kill her.

Visitors drove up to the house in the course of the afternoon--the county families were beginning to call--and Lady Andinnian had to go down. Miss Blake was off to one of St. Jerome\'s services--of which the Reverend Guy Cattacomb was establishing several daily. Sir Karl came home while the visitors were there. After their departure, when he came to look round for his wife, he was told she had hastily thrown on bonnet and mantle and gone out. Sir Karl rather wondered.

Not only to avoid her husband, but also because she wanted to see Margaret Sumnor, and perhaps gain from her a crumb of comfort in her utter wretchedness, had Lady Andinnian run forth to gain the vicarage. Margaret was lying as before, on her hard couch, or board; doing, for a wonder, nothing. Her hands were clasped meekly before her on her white wrapper, her eyelids seemed heavy with crying. But the eyes smiled a cheerful greeting to Lady Andinnian.

"Is anything the matter, Margaret?"

It was but the old story, the old grievance; Margaret Sumnor was pained by it, more or less, nearly every day of her life--the home treatment of her father: the contempt shown to him by his second family; ay, and by his wife.

"It is a thing I cannot talk of much, Lucy. I should not speak of it at all, but that it is well known to Foxwood, and commented on openly. Caroline and Martha set papa at naught in all ways: the insolence of their answers to him, both in words and manner, brings the blush of pain and shame to his face. This time the trouble was about that new place of Miss Blake\'s, St. Jerome\'s. Papa forbid them to frequent it; but it was just as though he had spoken to a stone--in fact, worse; for they retorted and set him at defiance. They wanted daily service, they said, and should go where it was held. So now papa, I believe, thinks of resuming his daily services here, at Trinity, hoping it may counteract the other. There, that\'s enough of home and my red eyes, Lucy. You don\'t look well."

Lady Andinnian drew her chair quite close to the invalid, so that she might let her hand rest in the one held out for her. "I have a trouble too, Margaret," she whispered. "A dreadful, sudden trouble, a blow; and I think it has nearly broken my heart. I cannot tell you what it is; I cannot tell any one in the world----"

"Except your husband," interposed Miss Sumnor. "Never have any concealments from him, Lucy."

Lady Andinnian\'s face turned red and white with embarrassment. "Yes, him; I shall have to speak to him," she said, in some hesitation: and Miss Sumnor\'s deep insight into ot............