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: "When lovely woman stoops to folly, And finds too late that men betray----" Miss Blake had never in her life cared for the song, but it bore now a singular charm. Every word was distinct, and she listened to the end. A curious speculation crossed her. Was this young girl singing the lines in character? "Heaven help her then!" cried Miss Blake--for she was not all hardness. But how was she, herself, to get away? She might remain there unsought for ever. There was nothing for it but boldly showing herself. And, as the servant was then coming back across the lawn with some herbs which she had apparently been to gather, Miss Blake wound out of the maze, and presented herself before the woman's astonished eyes.