"I've never see'd her," said Tom Pepp. "I've never see'd her come out, and never see'd nobody go in but the butcher's boy. He don't go in, neither: he rings at the gate and waits there till they come to him. A woman in a poke bonnet comes out and does the other errands." "Well, it must be a very lively place for a young lady!" mentally observed Miss Blake with sarcasm. "She must want to hide herself from the world." "Mother see'd her at church once with her veil up. She'd never see'd nothing like her so pretty at Foxwood." Turning to pursue her walk, Tom Pepp, who worked for Farmer Truefit, and who was in fact playing truant for half an hour and thought it might be policy not to play it any longer, turned also, the farm lying in that direction. At that moment, Miss Blake, happening to cast her eyes across the road, saw the head and shoulders of a gentleman stretched out of one of the sash windows of Clematis Cottage, evidently regarding her attentively. "Who is that gentleman, Tom Pepp?" "Him! Well now, what did I hear his name was again!" returned the lad, considering. "Smith. That's it. It's Mr. Smith, 'um. He be a stranger to the place, and come here just afore Mrs. Andinnian died. It's said he was some friend of her'n." "Rather a curious person, that Mrs. Andinnian, was she not!" remarked Miss Blake, invited to gossip by the intelligence of the boy. "I never seed her," was the reiteration. "I've never yet seed the new master of Foxwood, Sir Karl Andinnian. It's said Sir Karl is coming home himself soon," added the boy; "him and his lady. Hope he'll be as good for the place as Sir Joseph was." They passed on; the opposite gentleman's eyes following Miss Blake: of which she was quite conscious. Soon they came to the road on the left hand that led direct to the village. Miss Blake glanced down it, but continued her walk straight onwards, as if she had a mind to go on to the railway station. Casting her eyes this way and that, she was attracted by a pile of ruins on the other side the road, with what looked like a kind of modern room amidst them. "Why, what's that?" she cried to Tom Pepp, standing still to gaze. "Oh, them be the ruins, 'um," answered Tom Pepp. "It had used to be the chapel belonging to the grey friars at the monastery." "What friars?--what monastery!" eagerly returned Miss Blake, much interested. The friars were dead years ago, and the monastery had crumbled to pieces, and Mr. Truefit's farm was built upon where it used to stand, was the substance of the boy's answer; delivered in terrible fright, for he caught sight of his master, Mr. Truefit, at a distance. The farmhouse lay back beyond the first field. Miss Blake glanced at it; but all her interest was concentrated in these ruins close at hand.