"They have not made any change, you see, Lucy: I did not give orders: It was my mother's chamber during her short span of residence here. The next, that little dressing-room of yours, she made her upstairs sitting-room. Perhaps you would like to have this made into a sitting-room for yourself." "Nay, Karl, if I want to sit upstairs, there's my dressing-room. We will let this be as it is. Is that Foxwood?" she added, pointing to the roofs of houses and a church-spire in the distance. "Yes, that's Foxwood." "And what are all those trees over the way?" turning her finger rather towards the right: in fact to the Maze. "There are some chimneys amidst them. Is it a house?" "Yes." "A gentleman's house? It must be pleasant to have neighbours so near, if they are nice people. Is it occupied, Karl!" "I--I fancy so. The truth is, Lucy,"--breaking into rather a forced laugh--"that I am as yet almost as much a a stranger here as yourself. Shall I call Aglaé? I'm sure you must want to get your bonnet off." "Aglaé's there, you know; I am going to her. But first of all"--clasping her arms fondly round him and lifting her sweet face to his--"let me thank you for this beautiful home. Oh, Karl! how happy we shall be in it." "God willing!" he answered in a beseeching tone of exquisite pain. And, as he held her to him in the moment's tenderness, his chest heaved with a strange emotion. "How he loves me," thought Lucy, passing to her own rooms. For she put the emotion down to that. "I wonder if there ever was such love before in the world as his and mine? Aglaé, I must wear white to-day." She went down to dinner in white muslin and white ribbons, with a lily in her hair, a very bride to look at. Poor girl! it was a gala-day with her, this coming home, almost like her wedding day. Poor wife! The only one to talk much at dinner was Lucy. Miss Blake was not in one of her amiable moods: Sir Karl and Lucy had both dressed for dinner: she had not, not supposing they would, and that helped to put her out. In this retired spot, and with her head filled with Mr. Cattacomb and St. Jerome's, Miss Blake had been almost forgetting that there existed such a thing as dressing for dinner. Karl was silent and grave as usual, just like a man preoccupied. His wife had become used to his air of sadness. She set it down, partly to the cause of the mysterious communication he had made to her the night before their marriage, and which had never since been mentioned between them, and partly to his ill-fated brother's trouble and shocking death. Therefore Lucy took the sadness as a matter of course, and never would appear to notice it. Miss Blake began to converse at last. She spoke of St. Jerome's: telling with much exultation all that had been done. But Sir Karl looked grave. The good sound doctrines and worship of what used to be called High-Church were his own: but he did not like these new and extreme movements that caused scandal.