"Oh yes, she lives there," slightingly returned Miss Blake. "She had a baby at the close of summer, but it died." "A baby! Why, she was a young widow? Stay--no--what was it?--Oh, her husband was abroad. Yes, I remember now. Has he come home yet?" "As much as he ever will come, I expect," observed Miss Blake. "The girl has just as much a husband as I have, Mrs. Cleeve." "Why, what is it that you would imply?" cried Mrs. Cleeve, struck with the words and the tone. "I once, quite accidentally, heard her sing, 'When lovely woman stoops to folly?' You know the song? It was, in one sense of the word, sung in character." "Oh, dear!" cried Mrs. Cleeve! "But--but what does Sir Karl do there?" "Sir Karl? Oh--he is her landlord." The taunting kind of way in which Miss Blake said it, turned Mrs. Cleeve's delicate cheeks to a rosy red. All kinds of unpleasant thoughts began crowding into her mind. "Theresa, what do you mean?" she asked, her voice dropping with its own dread. "_Have_ you any meaning?" And the chances were--taking into consideration the love of gossip and of scandal so inherent in woman--that Theresa Blake would there and then have disclosed that she had a meaning, and what the meaning was: but in that self-same moment she happened to turn her eyes on Mr. Smith, the agent. He was leaning over his garden gate, playing with a bunch of late roses; and he gravely lifted his hat to Miss Blake as she looked at him. There was something in the grave look, or in the sight of the man himself, or in the roses, telling of summer, that recalled most vividly to Miss Blake's mind the private conversation she had once held with Mr. Smith, and the caution he had given her. At any rate, Jane Shore and the lighted taper, and the white sheet, and all the other accessories, rose up before her mental vision as plainly as one can see into a mirror. The penance looked no more palatable to Miss Blake now than it had then. As well keep clear of such risks, great and small. She changed her tone. "I really don't know anything about the young woman, Mrs. Cleeve. Pray do not take up a mistaken notion. She is Sir Karl's tenant; that is all." "But if she is not--quite--quite circumspect in her conduct, it must be rather unpleasant to have her close to the Court," said Mrs. Cleeve. "Oh, she lives a perfectly retired life." "She is very pretty, I think?" "Beautiful as an angel." Nothing more passed. The two sparrows came flying to a proximate tree, and began fighting again. But an uneasy impression was left on Mrs. Cleeve's mind; for she could not forget the strangely-significant tone in which Miss Blake had spoken, and its too sudden change to cautious indifference. Karl was pacing one of the broad paths that evening, in his grounds, when he found himself joined by Mrs. Cleeve. She had thrown a warm shawl over her grey silk evening dress. He gave her his arm. The shadows were deepening: the evening star was already twinkling in the clear sky.