They stood together in the north parlour: Sir Karl Andinnian and Miss Blake. In the least severe terms he knew how to employ, Sir Karl was telling her of her abuse of his hospitality--the setting his wife against him--and intimating that her visit to them had better for the present terminate.

It took Miss Blake by surprise. She had remarked a difference in their behaviour to one another, in the past day or two. Lucy scarcely left Sir Karl alone a minute: she was with him in his parlour; she clung to his arm in unmistakable fondness in the garden; her eyes were for ever seeking his with a look of pleading, deprecating love. "They could not have been two greater simpletons in their honeymoon," severely thought Miss Blake.

Something else had rather surprised her. Walking past the Maze on this same morning, she saw the gate propped open, and a notice, that the house was to let, erected on a board. The place was empty; the late tenants of it, the lady and her maid, had departed. Turning to ask Mr. Smith the meaning of this, she saw a similar board at his house: Mr. Smith was packing up, and Clematis Cottage was in the market.

"Good gracious! Are you going to leave us, Mr. Smith?" she asked, she asked, as that gentleman showed himself for a moment at the open window, with an armful of books and papers.

"Sorry to say that I am, madam. Business is calling me to London."

"I hear that Mrs. Grey has left, too. What can have taken her away?"

"Don\'t know," said Mr. Smith. "Does not care to stop in the house, perhaps, after a death has taken place in it. Servants must die as well as other people, though."

Without another word to her, he went to the back of the room with his load, and began stuffing it into a trunk with his one arm. Miss Blake summed up the conclusion in her mind.

"Sir Karl must have summarily dismissed him."

Little did she foresee that Sir Karl was about, so to say, summarily to dismiss herself. On this same day it was that he sought the interview. When the past was touched upon by Karl, and her part in it, Miss Blake, for once in her life, showed signs that she had a temper, and her face turned white.

"You might have done me incalculable mischief, Miss Blake: mischief that could never be repaired in this world," he said, standing to face her. "I do not allude to the estrangement that might have been caused between myself and my wife, but evil of a different nature. What could possibly have induced you to take up so outrageous a notion in regard to me?"

Miss Blake, in rather a shrill tone--for she was one of those unfortunate individuals whose voices grow harsh with annoyance--ventured upon a disparaging word of Mrs. Grey, but evaded the true question. Karl did not allow her to go on.

"That lady, madam," he said, raising his hand with a kind of solemnity, "was good and pure, and honourable as is my own wife; and my dear wife knows it now. She was sacred to me as a sister. Her husband was my dear and long-tried friend; and he was for some months in great trouble and distress. I wished to do what I could to alleviate it: my visits there were paid to him."

"But he was not living there," rejoined Miss Blake, partly in hardy contest, partly in surprise.

"Indeed he was living there. He had his reasons for not wishing to make any acquaintance in the place, and so kept himself in retirement; reasons in which I fully acquiesced. However, his troubles are at an end now; and--and the family have ceased to be my tenants."

Whether Miss Blake felt more angry or more vexed, she was not collected enough at the moment to know. It was a very annoying termination to her long and seemingly well-grounded suspicions. She always wished to do right, and had the grace to feel somewhat ashamed of the past.

"What I said to Lucy I believed I had perfectly good grounds for, Sir Karl. I had the interests of religion at heart when I spoke."

"Religion!" repeated Sir Karl, his lips involuntarily curling. "Religion is as religion does, Miss Blake."

"After all, she did not heed me; so, if it did no good, it did no harm. Lucy is so very weak-minded--"

"Weak-minded!" interposed Sir Karl. "If to act as she did--to bear patiently and make no stir under extreme provocation, trusting to the future to right the wrong--if this is to be weak-minded, why I thank God that she is so. Had she been strong-minded as you, Miss Blake, the result might have been terribly different."

Miss Blake was nettled. Her manner froze.

"I see what it is, Sir Karl; you and your wife are so displeased with me that I feel my presence in your house is no longer welcome. As soon as I can make arrangements I will quit it--thanking you both for your hospitality."

She paused. Sir Karl paused too. Perhaps she had a faint expectation that he would hasten to refute the decision, and request her to stay on. But he did nothing of the kind. On the contrary, he, in a word or two of politeness, acquiesced in the proposal of departure, as though it admitted of no question.

"I should not have trespassed on you so long--in fact, I should not have stayed at all after your first return here with Lady Andinnian, but for St. Jerome\'s," she rejoined, her temper getting up again, while there ran in her mind an undercurrent of thought, as to whether she could find suitable lodgings in Foxwood.

"You will not have to regret that, in leaving," he observed. "I am about to do away with St. Jerome\'s."

"To do away with St. Jerome\'s!"

"In a week\'s time from this it will be shut up, and all the nonsense within its walls cleared away."

"The nonsense!" shrieked Miss Blake.

"Why you cannot call it sense--or religion either. To tell you the truth, Miss Blake, the place has been an offence to me for some time. It has caused a scandal--"

"For shame, Sir Karl Andinnian! Scandal, indeed!"

"And this little bit of fresh scandal that has arisen now, people don\'t like at all," quietly persisted Sir Karl. "Neither do I. So, to prevent the bishop coming down upon us here, Miss Blake, I close the place."

Miss Blake compressed her lips. She could have struck him as he stood.

"What do you mean by a \'fresh\' scandal, pray?"

"Well, the story runs that Mr. Cattacomb was seen to kiss one of the young ladies in the vestry."

Miss Blake started, Miss Blake shrieked, Miss Blake wondered that the very ceiling did not drop down upon the bold false tongue. To do her justice, she believed St. Jerome\'s pastor was by far too holy a man for any wickedness of the sort. Not to speak of restraining prudence.

"Sir Karl, may you be forgiven! Where do you expect to go to when you die?"

"To the heaven, I hope, that our merciful God has provided for us," he answered, meeting the query solemnly and with some emotion. "Some of those dearer to me than life have gone on thither to wait for me."

At which Miss Blake drew up her pious head, and intimated that she feared it might be another kind of place, unless he should mend his manners. And Sir Karl closed the interview, leaving her to understand............