She would not so much as turn her eyes on the gate of the Maze: had she been on that side of the road she would have caught up her flounces as she passed it. Never, willingly, would she soil her shoes with that side of the way again by choice--the place had a brand on it. It was quite refreshing to turn her eyes on Clematis Cottage, sheltering the respectable single bachelor who lived there. Turning her eyes on the cottage, she turned them on the bachelor as well. Mr. Smith in a light morning coat, and his arm as usual in a black sling, was out of doors amidst the rose trees on the little lawn, gazing at one of them through his green spectacles. Miss Blake stopped as he saluted her, and good mornings were exchanged. "I am no judge of flowers," he said, "have not lived among them enough for that; but it appears to me that this rose, just come out, is a very rare and beautiful specimen." Obeying the evident wish--given in manner alone, not in words--that she should go in and look at the rose, Miss Blake entered. It was a tea-rose of exquisite tint and sweetness. Miss Blake was warm in her admiration; she had not noticed any exactly like it at the Court. Before she could stop the sacrilege Mr. Smith had opened his penknife, cut off the rose, and was presenting it to her. "Oh, how could you!" she exclaimed. "It was so beautiful here, in your garden." "Madam, it will be more beautiful there," he rejoined, as she began to put it in her waistband. "I should be very sorry, but that I see other buds will soon be out." "Yes, by to-morrow. Earth dots not deal out her flowers to us with a niggardly hand." Accompanying the resolution Miss Blake had come to the previous evening and perfected in the night--in her eyes a very righteous and proper resolution; namely, to disclose what she knew to Lady Andinnian--accompanying this, I say, was an undercurrent of determination to discover as many particulars of the ill-savoured matter as she possibly could discover. Standing at this moment on Mr. Smith's grass-plat, that gentleman beside her and the gates of the Maze in full view opposite, an idea struck Miss Blake that perhaps he knew something of the affair. She began to question him. Lightly and apparently carelessly, interspersed with observations about the flowers, she turned the conversation on the Maze, asking this, and remarking that. "Lonely it must be for Mrs. Grey? Oh, yes. How long has she lived there, Mr. Smith?" "She came--let me see. Shortly, I think, before Mrs. Andinnian's death." "Ah, yes. At the time Sir Karl was staying here." "Was Sir Karl staying here? By the way, yes, I think he was."