"Don't know," said Mr. Smith. "Does not care to stop in the house, perhaps, after a death has taken place in it. Servants must die as well as other people, though." Without another word to her, he went to the back of the room with his load, and began stuffing it into a trunk with his one arm. Miss Blake summed up the conclusion in her mind. "Sir Karl must have summarily dismissed him." Little did she foresee that Sir Karl was about, so to say, summarily to dismiss herself. On this same day it was that he sought the interview. When the past was touched upon by Karl, and her part in it, Miss Blake, for once in her life, showed signs that she had a temper, and her face turned white. "You might have done me incalculable mischief, Miss Blake: mischief that could never be repaired in this world," he said, standing to face her. "I do not allude to the estrangement that might have been caused between myself and my wife, but evil of a different nature. What could possibly have induced you to take up so outrageous a notion in regard to me?" Miss Blake, in rather a shrill tone--for she was one of those unfortunate individuals whose voices grow harsh with annoyance--ventured upon a disparaging word of Mrs. Grey, but evaded the true question. Karl did not allow her to go on. "That lady, madam," he said, raising his hand with a kind of solemnity, "was good and pure, and honourable as is my own wife; and my dear wife knows it now. She was sacred to me as a sister. Her husband was my dear and long-tried friend; and he was for some months in great trouble and distress. I wished to do what I could to alleviate it: my visits there were paid to _him_." "But he was not living there," rejoined Miss Blake, partly in hardy contest, partly in surprise. "Indeed he was living there. He had his reasons for not wishing to make any acquaintance in the place, and so kept himself in retirement; reasons in which I fully acquiesced. However, his troubles are at an end now; and--and the family have ceased to be my tenants." Whether Miss Blake felt more angry or more vexed, she was not collected enough at the moment to know. It was a very annoying termination to her long and seemingly well-grounded suspicions. She always wished to do right, and had the grace to feel somewhat ashamed of the past. "What I said to Lucy I believed I had perfectly good grounds for, Sir Karl. I had the interests of religion at heart when I spoke." "Religion!" repeated Sir Karl, his lips involuntarily curling. "Religion is as religion does, Miss Blake." "After all, she did not heed me; so, if it did no good, it did no harm. Lucy is so very weak-minded--" "Weak-minded!" interposed Sir Karl. "If to act as she did--to bear patiently and make no stir under extreme provocation, trusting to the future to right the wrong--if this is to be weak-minded, why I thank God that she is so. Had she been strong-minded as you, Miss Blake, the result might have been terribly different."