Freely and lightly spoke Karl. But in good truth Mr. Smith fairly puzzled him. He knew no more who he was or whence he came than he had known before; though he did now know what his business was at Foxwood. Mr. Smith's conversation during the interview had turned on the Foxwood estate: but he must have been aware Sir Karl saw all the while that his agency was only a blind--a blind to serve as a pretext for his residence at Foxwood. The two were playing a shallow part of pretence with one another. Mrs. Andinnian had fixed the amount of salary he was to receive, and Sir Karl meant to continue the payment of it. Why?--the reader may ask. Because Sir Karl dared not refuse; for the man knew too much of Mrs. Andinnian's dangerous secret: and it lay in his power to render it more dangerous still. At length Sir Karl went up to London to rejoin his wife. Lucy gave a startled cry when she saw him--he was looking so ill; and Mrs. Cleeve accused him of having had the fever. Karl turned it off lightly: it was nothing, he said, but the confinement to his mother's sick-room. But Miss Blake, who was growing very keen in her propensity for making the world better than it is, could not understand two things. Why Karl need have lingered so long at Foxwood, or why he could not have had his wife there. CHAPTER XI. At the Gate of the Maze. A more charming place than Foxwood Court presented in the summer months when the rare and sweet flowers by which it was surrounded were in bloom, could not have been found in the Kentish county. The mansion was not very large, but it was exceedingly gay and pretty to look upon; a white building with a goodly number of large windows, those on the lower floor mostly opening to the ground, so that the terrace could be gained from the rooms at will. The terrace--a gravel walk with brilliant flower beds on either side--ran along the front and the two sides of the house. A marble step or two in four places descended to a lower walk, or terrace, and from thence there was spread out the level lawn, a wide expanse, dotted with beds of flowers, and bounded with groves of beautiful trees. The chief entrance to the house was in its centre: a pillared portico, surmounting a flight of steps that led down to the broad walk dividing the lawn. At the end of this walk between the bank of trees were the large iron gates and the lodge; and there were two or three small private gates of egress besides in the iron palisades that enclosed the grounds beyond the trees. If there was a fault to be found with the locality altogether, it perhaps was that it had too many trees about it.