"That may account for your being tired and not looking well: but not for the weeping, Lucy. As I stood here waiting for you to answer my knock, I heard your sobs."
"Yes," she said, rather faintly, feeling how useless it would be to deny that there had been some weeping. "I get a little low-spirited sometimes in the evening."
"But why? wherefore?"
"Is life so pleasant with us just now that I can always be gay, think you!" she retorted, after a pause, and her voice took a tone of resentment.
"But the unpleasantness is of your making; not mine. You know it, Lucy."
"Then--then it is right that I should be the one to suffer," was her impatient answer--for his words were trying her almost beyond endurance. "Let it go so: I do not wish to speak of it further."
Karl was standing at the opposite corner of the window, facing her, his arms folded. On his part he was beginning to be a little out of patience too, with what he deemed her unreasonable caprice. For a few moments there was silence.
"What I want to tell you is this, Lucy. My visit to London was connected with that wish which you seem to have so much at
heart--though I cannot exactly understand why----"
"I have no wish at heart," she resentfully interrupted.
"Nay, but hear me. The wish you expressed to me I think you must have at heart, since on its fulfilment you say depends our reconciliation. I speak of the removal of--of the tenants of the Maze," he added, half breaking down, in his sensitive hesitation. "Since my conversation with you on Saturday, during which, if you remember, this stipulation of yours was made, there occurred, by what I should call, a singular chance, only that I do not believe anything is chance that affects our vital interests in this life--there occurred to me a slight circumstance by which I thought I saw a possibility of carrying out your wish----"