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: