All in a moment, as it seemed, just as the clergyman began to read, springing she could not tell from whence, there advanced Sir Karl Andinnian. He was in black attire, but wore neither crape band nor scarf; and it might have been thought he was only an ordinary spectator. Hewitt, however, drew a step back to give his master the place of precedence, as though out of proper respect, as did Ann Hopley: and Sir Karl took off his hat and stood there, close to the coffin, his head bent low. "How very strange it is!" thought Lucy. "Who can be in the coffin?--and who is the woman in the black silk cloak and hood? There is Mr. Smith, the agent, too!--he is standing near with his hat off now." "Lucy! Can it be you? We did not expect you until to-morrow." The voice was Miss Blake's. St. Jerome's devotees were no more free from curiosity than their inferiors; and a few of them had chanced to be taking a walk past the churchyard just at the critical moment; of whom Miss Blake was one. "I thought I would come to-day, and not give Sir Karl the trouble of fetching me," replied Lucy. "Aglaé is coming on from Basham by the next train with the luggage. How are you, Theresa? Will you come inside?" Miss Blake's answer was to open the fly door, seat herself by Lady Andinnian, and turn her gaze on the churchyard. The scene bore a charm for her as well as for Lucy. "Why, that's Sir Karl there!" she exclaimed in surprise, the spectators' heads having intercepted her view while on the ground. "Yes," assented Lucy. "And there's Hewitt--and Sir Karl's agent--and a mourner with her face hidden. Who is it that is being buried, Theresa?" "Why, it's only the old gardener at the Maze. As to Hewitt, I suppose he had to go to keep the woman in countenance. The old man was her husband, you know." "But what should bring Sir Karl there?" "And standing first, as though he were chief mourner!" commented Miss Blake, devouring the scene with her condemning eyes, and giving the reins to her thoughts. "_I_ don't know why he is there, Lucy. There are several things that I have not attempted to understand for some time past." "Is not that the part of the churchyard where the Andinnians lie?-- where their vault is?" "It is. But Hopley is being buried there, you see: and that infant, that you know of, was buried there. The clerk is in a fine way over it, people say: but Sir Karl ruled that it should be so." Thoughts connected with Mrs. Grey, and the inexplicable manner in which Sir Karl seemed to yield to her humours, even to the honouring of her servants, flashed into Lucy's brain. It did not tend to appease her previous anger against him. "Why could not Sir Karl come for me to-day, Theresa?"