"Ask her to send me a cup by Aglaé, please. I shall stay here to rest my ankle." And as Karl closed the door upon her, poor Lucy burst into a flood of tears, and sobbed as though her heart would break. Underlying all else in her mind was a keen sense of insult, of slight, of humiliation: and she asked herself whether she ought to bear it.
Pacing the gravel path round the trees of the Maze after dark had fallen--as much dark as a summer's night ever gives us--were Karl Andinnian and Mrs. Grey. She, expecting him, went to wait for him just within the gate: as she did the evening Miss Blake had the satisfaction of watching and seeing. It was a still, hot night, and Mrs. Grey proposed that they should walk round the outer circle once, before going in: for she had things to say to him.
"Why have you 'kept away these last few days, Karl?" she asked, taking the arm he offered her. "Adam has been so vexed and impatient over it: but I should not have ventured to write to you for only that--I hope you were not angry with me."
He told her he was not angry. He told her why he had kept away--that an instinct warned him it might be imprudent to come in too often. It seemed to him, he added, that the very hedges had eyes to watch him. She shivered a little, as though some chill of damp had struck her; and proceeded to relate what she had to say.
By a somewhat singular coincidence, a copy of the same newspaper that contained the mysterious paragraph had been bought at the little newsvendor's in Foxwood by Ann Hopley, who was fond of reading the news when her day's work was over. She saw the paragraph, took alarm, and showed it to her master and mistress.
"It has nearly frightened me to death, Karl," said Mrs. Grey. "The paper was a week old when Ann bought it: and I am glad it was, or I should have been living upon thorns longer than I have been."
He told her that he had seen it. And he did what he could to reassure
her, saying it was probably but an unmeaning assertion, put in from
dearth of news.
"That is just what Mr. Smith says," she replied. "He thinks it is from the brain of some poor penny-a-liner."
"Mr. Smith!" exclaimed Karl. "How do you know?"
"Adam would see him about it, and I sent for him. He, Smith, says there's nothing for it now but staying here; and Adam seems to be of the same opinion."