"He is gone there," she said, the pulses of her heart quickening and her face taking a ghastly tinge in the moonlight.
Miss Blake, who had been also lingering in the garden, in some of its shaded nooks and corners, her thoughts busy with Guy Cattacomb and with certain improvements that reverend man was contemplating to introduce at St. Jerome's, had also seen Sir Karl, and watched his stealthy exit. She immediately glided to another of the small private gates of egress, cautiously opened it, and looked out.
"Yes, I thought so: he is off to the Maze," she mentally cried, as she saw Sir Karl, who had crossed the road, walking towards that secluded spot, and keeping close against the opposite hedge. The moonlight was flung pretty broadly upon the road to-night, but the dark hedge served to screen him in a degree. Miss Blake's eyes were keen by moonlight or by daylight. She watched him pass under the trees at the entrance: she watched him open the gate, and enter. And Miss Blake, religious woman that she was, wondered that the skies did not drop down upon such a monster in human shape; she wondered that the same pure air from heaven could be permitted to be breathed by him and by that earthly saint, The Reverend Guy.
Some few of us, my readers, are judging others in exactly the same mistaken manner now: and have no more suspicion that we are wrong and they right than Miss Theresa Blake had.
[CHAPTER XXII.]
With his Brother.
Sir Karl locked the gate safely, wound himself through the maze of trees, and soon reached the open- space before the house. Part of the grass-plat was steeped in light, and he saw Mrs. Grey walking there. He crossed it to accost her.
"Did you get back yesterday, Rose?" he inquired, after shaking hands.
"No, not until this afternoon. Rennet kept me. I saw him when I drove there yesterday: but he was then preparing to go out of town for the rest of the day on business, and it was impossible for him to do what was wanted before this morning. So I had to wait in town."
"I wonder we did not chance to travel down together, then!" observed Karl. "I did not return until this afternoon. Would you like to take my arm, Rose, while you walk?"