How short a period of time may serve to bring forth vital chances and changes! Sir Karl and Lady Andinnian were absent only a week, yet before they returned a stranger had taken up his abode at Foxwood, indirectly brought to it by Karl himself; and something had happened at the Maze.

Lucy was out amidst her plants and shrubs and flowers the evening of her return, when the shadows were lengthening on the grass. Karl was writing letters indoors; Miss Blake had hurried up from dinner to attend vespers. In spite of the estrangement and misery that pervaded the home atmosphere, Lucy felt glad to be there again. The meeting with her husband, after the week\'s entire separation, had caused her pulses to quicken and her heart to bound with something that was very like joy. Colonel Cleeve was out of all danger; was nearly well again. It had been a sharp but temporary attack of sickness. The Colonel and his wife had pressed Lucy to prolong her stay, had asked Sir Karl to come and join her; and they both considered it somewhat unaccountable that Lucy should have persisted in declining. Theresa was alone at Foxwood, was the chief plea of excuse she urged: the real impediment being that she and Karl could not stay at her mother\'s home together without risk of the terms on which they lived becoming known. So Karl, on the day appointed, went from London to Winchester, and brought Lucy home.

For the forbearance she had exercised, the patient silence she had maintained, Lucy had in a degree received the reward during this sojourn with her father and mother. More than ever was it brought home to her conviction then, that she would almost rather have died than betray it. It would have inflicted on them so much pain and shame. It would have lowered herself so in their sight, and in the sight of those old and young friends who had known her in her girlhood, and who whispered their sense of what her happiness must now be, and their admiration of her attractive husband. "Martyrdom rather than that!" said Lucy, clasping her hands with fixed resolution, as she paced the grass, thinking over her visit, on this, the evening of her return.

Karl came up to her with two letters in his hand. She was then sitting under the acacia tree. The sun had set, but in the west shone a flood of golden light. The weather in the daytime was still hot as in the middle of that hot summer, but the evenings and nights were cool. Lucy\'s shawl lay beside her.

"It is time to put it on," said Karl--and he wrapped it round her himself carefully. It caused her to see the address of the two letters in his hand. One was to Plunkett and Plunkett; the other to Mrs. Cleeve.

"You have been writing to mamma!" she exclaimed.

"She asked me to be sure and let her have one line to say you got home safely. I have given your love, Lucy."

"Thank you, Karl. And now you axe going to the post."

"And now I am going to the post. And I must make haste, or I shall find the box shut."

He took his hand from her shoulder, where it had momentarily rested, and crossed the grass, Lucy looking after him.

"How thoughtful and kind he is!" she soliloquised. "It is just as though he loved me." And her imagination went off wandering at random, as imagination will. Once more she reverted to that former possibility---of condoning the past and becoming reconciled again. It was very good of him, and she felt it so, to have stayed that week in London. She fancied he had done it that she might know he did not spend his time at the Maze in her absence. And so, the evening shadows came on, and still Lucy sat there, lost in her dreams.

Miss Blake, it has been said, had hurried from dinner, to go to vespers. As she turned into the road from the Court, she saw a boy a little in advance of her on the other side, his basket on his arm. It was the doctor\'s boy, Cris Lumley, against whom Miss Blake had a grievance. She crossed over and caught him up just as he rang at the Maze gate.

"Now, Cris Lumley, what have you to say for yourself! For three days you have not appeared at class."

"\'Tain\'t my fault," said Cris Lumley, who was just as impudent as he looked; a very different boy indeed from civil-natured Tom Pepp. "It be master\'s."

"How is it your master\'s?"

"What master says is this here: \'I be to attend to him and my place; or I be to give it up, if I wants to kick up my heels all day at school.\'"

"I don\'t believe you," said Miss Blake. "I shall speak to Mr. Moore."

"Just do then," said the independent boy.

"The fact of the case is no doubt this, Cris Lumley--that you play truant for half the day sometimes, on the plea of being all that while at school."

"Master said another thing, he did," resumed the young gentleman, ignoring the last accusation. "He said as if Parson Sumnor warn\'t no longer good enough for me to learn religion from, he\'d get another boy in my place, that he was good enough for. There! you may ask him whether he said it or not."

Declining to bandy further words with him until she should have seen the surgeon, Miss Blake was hastening on, when the fringe of her mantle caught against his medicine basket. It reminded her that some one must be ill. Battling for a moment with her curiosity, but not for long, she condescended to inquire who was ill at the Maze.

"It be the missis," replied Cris.

"The mistress! Do you mean Mrs. Grey?"

Mr. Lumley nodded.

"What is the matter with her?"

"Got a baby," said the boy shortly.

For the instant Miss Blake felt struck into herself, and was dumb. She did not believe it.

"He were born yesterday," added the boy. "This be some physic for him: and this be the missis\'s."

Throwing back the lid of one end of his basket, Miss Blake saw two bottles, done up in white paper. The larger one was addressed "Mrs. Grey," the small one "Mrs. Grey\'s infant."

She turned away without another word, feeling ready to sink with the weight of the world\'s iniquity. It pressed upon her most unpleasantly throughout the evening service at St. Jerome\'s, and for once Miss Blake was inattentive to the exhortations of the Rev. Guy. Looking at the matter as Miss Blake looked at it, it must be confessed that she had just cause for condemnation.

To return to Lucy. It grew dusk and more dusk; and she at length went indoors. Karl came in, bringing Mr. Moore, whom he had overtaken near the gate: and almost close upon that, Miss Blake returned. The sight of the doctor, sitting there with Karl and Lucy, brought back all Miss Blake\'s vexation. It had been at boiling-point for the last hour, and now it bubbled over. The wisest course no doubt would have been to hold her tongue: but her indignation--a perfectly righteous and proper indignation, as she deemed it--forbade that. The ill-doing of the boy, respecting which she had been about to appeal to Mr. Moore, was quite lost sight of in this ill-doing. There could be no fear of risking Jane Shore\'s sheet of penance in repeating what she had heard. It was her duty to speak: she fully believed that: her duty to open Lucy\'s obtuse eyes--and who knew but Sir Karl might be brought to his senses through the speaking? The surgeon and Lucy were sitting near the window in the sweet still twilight: Karl stood back by the mantel-piece: and they were deep in some discussion about flowers. Miss Blake sat in silence, gathering her mental forces for the combat, when the present topic should have died away.

"I--I have heard some curious news," she began then in a low, reluctant tone: and in good truth she was reluctant to enter on it. "I heard it from that boy of yours, Mr. Moore. He says there\'s a baby at the Maze."

"Yes," readily acquiesced Mr. Moore. "A baby boy, born yesterday."

And Miss Blake, rising and standing at angles between the two, saw a motion of startled surprise on the part of Karl Andinnian. Lucy looked up; simply not understanding. After a pause, during which no one spoke, Miss Blake, in language softened to ambiguousness, took upon herself to intimate that, in her opinion, the Maze had no business with a baby.

Mr. Moore laughed pleasantly. "That, I imagine, is Mrs. Grey\'s concern," he said.

Lucy understood now; she felt startled almost to sickness. "Is it Mrs. Grey who has the baby?" was on the point of her tongue: but she did not speak it.

"Where is Mrs. Grey\'s husband?" demanded Miss Blake, in her most uncompromising tone.

"In London, I fancy, just now," said the doctor. "Has she one at all, Mr. Moore?"

"Good gracious, yes," cried the hearty-natured surgeon, utterly unconscious that it could be of particular moment to anybody present whether she had or not. "I\'d answer for it with my life, nearly. She\'s as nice a young lady as I\'d ever wish to attend; and good too."

"For Lucy\'s sake, I\'ll go on; for his sake, standing there in his shame," thought Miss Blake, in her rectitude. "Better things may come of it: otherwise I\'d drop the hateful subject for ever."

"Mr. Moore," she continued aloud, "Why do you say the husband is in London?"

"Because Mrs. Grey said something to that effect," he answered. "At least, I understood her words to imply as much; but she was very ill at the moment, and I did not question further. It was when I was first called in."

"It has hitherto been represented that Mr. Grey was travelling abroad," pursued Miss Blake, with a tone and a stress on the "Mr. Grey."

"I know it has. But he may have returned. I am sure she said she had been up to London two or three weeks ago--and I thought she meant to imply that she went to meet her husband. It may have been a false conclusion I drew; but I certainly thought it."

Sir Karl took a step forward. "I can answer for it that Mrs. Grey did go up," he said, "for I chanced to travel in the same carriage with her. Getting into the up-train at the station one day, I found Mrs. Grey seated there."

Lucy glanced towards him as he spoke. There was no embarrassment in his countenance; his voice was easy and open as though he had spoken of a stranger. Her own face looked white as death.

"You did!" cried the doctor. "Did she tell you she was going up to meet Mr. Grey?"

"No, she did not. I put her into a cab at the terminus, and that\'s all I know about it. It was broiling hot, I remember."

"Well," resumed the doctor, "whether it was to meet her husband or whether not, to London she went for a day or two in the broiling heat--as Sir Karl aptly terms it--and she managed to fatigue herself so much that she has not been able to recover it, and has been very unwell ever since. This young gentleman, who chose to take upon himself to make his appearance in the world yesterday, was not due for a good couple of months to come."

Lucy rose and left the room, she and her white face. Karl followed her with his eyes: he had seen the whiteness.

"Is it a healthy child?" he asked.

"Quite so," replied the surgeon; "but very small. The worst of these little monkeys is, you can\'t send them back again with a whipping, when they make too much haste, and tell them to come again at proper time. Mrs. Grey\'s very ill."

"Is she?" cried Karl.

"Yes. And there\'s no nurse and no anything; matters are all at sixes and sevens."

"I hope she\'ll do well!" breathed Karl.

"So do I."

Miss Blake looked at the two speakers. The one seemed just as open as the other. She thought what a finished adept Karl Andinnian was getting to be in deception.

"I am going to the Maze now," said the doctor: "was on my way to it when you seduced me in here, Sir Karl. Good evening, Miss Blake."

He took his departure hastily as he spoke. He was, as he told them, on his way to the Maze then. Karl went with him to the outer gate, and then paced the lawn in the evening twilight.

"After all, it is well it\'s over," ran his thoughts. "This expected future illness was always putting itself in view when I was planning to get away Adam. Once Rose is well again, the ground will be, so far, clear. But good heavens! how it increases the risk! Here\'s Moore going in at any hour of the day or night, I suppose--and Adam so incautious! Well, I think he will take care of himself, and keep in seclusion for his own sake. And for myself--it brings more complication," he added with a sigh. "The child is the heir now instead of me: and the whole property must eventually come to him. Poor Lucy! I saw she felt it. Oh, she may well be vexed! Does she quite comprehend, I wonder, who this baby is, and what it will take from us?--Foxwood amidst the rest? I wish I had never married! I wish a merciful heaven had interposed to prevent it."

When Mr. Moore, some eight-and-forty hours previously, received a hurried visit from Mrs. Grey\'s servant, Ann Hopley, at the dusk of evening, and heard what she had to say about her mistress, he was excessively astonished, not having had the slightest idea that his services were likely to be wanted in any such way at the Maze. It is possible that some doubts of Mrs. Grey\'s position crossed his mind at the moment: but he was a good man, and he made it a rule never to think ill if he could by possibility think good; and when he came to see and converse with Mrs. Grey, he felt sure she was all she should be. The baby was born on the following morning. Since then the doctor, as Karl expressed it, had been going in at all hours: Ann Hopley invariably preceding him through the Maze, and conducting him out of it again at his departure. As he marched on to the Maze tonight after the above conversation at the Court, he wondered what Miss Blake had got in her head, and why she should betray so much anger over it.

Three or four days went on. The doctor passed in and out in the care of his patient, and never a notion entered his head that the Maze was tenanted by any save its ordinary inmates, or that one under a ban was lying there in concealment. Ann Hopley, letting her work go how it would, attended on her mistress and the baby; the old gardener was mostly busy in his garden as usual. On the fifth or sixth day from the commencement of the illness, Mr. Moore, upon paying his usual morning visit, found Mrs. Grey worse. There were rather dangerous symptoms of fever.

"Has she been exciting herself?" he privately asked of Ann Hopley.

"She did a little last night, sir," was the incautious admission.

"What about?"

"Well, sir--chiefly talking."

"Chiefly talking!" repeated the doctor. "But what were you about, to let her talk?" he demanded, supposing Ann Hopley to be the only other inmate of the house. "What possessed you to talk to her?"

Ann was silent. She could have said that it was not with her Mrs. Grey had talked, but with her husband.

"I must send a nurse in," he resumed. "Not only to see that she is kept quiet, but to attend to her constantly. It is not possible that you can be with her always with your housework to do."

But all of this Ann Hopley most strongly combated. She could attend to her mistress, and would, and did attend to her, she urged, and a nurse she would not have in the house. From the first, this question of a nurse had been a bone of contention: the doctor wanting to send one in; Ann Hopley and also Mrs. Grey strenuously objecting. So once more the doctor yielded, and let the matter drop, inwardly resolving that if his patient did not get better during the day, he should take French leave to pursue his own course.

Late in the afternoon he went in again. Mrs. Grey was worse: flushed, restless, and slightly delirious. The doctor said nothing; but when he got home, he sent a summons for Mrs. Chaffen. A skilled nurse, she; and first cousin to the Widow Jinks, both in respect to kin and to love of gossip.

That same evening, after dark, when Adam Andinnian was sitting in his wife\'s room, and Ann Hopley was concocting something in a saucepan over the kitchen fire, the gate bell clanged out. It had been nothing unusual to hear it these last few days at any hour; and the woman, putting the saucepan on the hob for safety, went forth, key in han............