"A scholar-gent, by name of Strange, who had come down to read and get up his health, and had brought his Greek and Latin books with him." CHAPTER IV. Nurse Chaffen on Duty. How short a period of time may serve to bring forth vital chances and changes! Sir Karl and Lady Andinnian were absent only a week, yet before they returned a stranger had taken up his abode at Foxwood, indirectly brought to it by Karl himself; and something had happened at the Maze. Lucy was out amidst her plants and shrubs and flowers the evening of her return, when the shadows were lengthening on the grass. Karl was writing letters indoors; Miss Blake had hurried up from dinner to attend vespers. In spite of the estrangement and misery that pervaded the home atmosphere, Lucy felt glad to be there again. The meeting with her husband, after the week's entire separation, had caused her pulses to quicken and her heart to bound with something that was very like joy. Colonel Cleeve was out of all danger; was nearly well again. It had been a sharp but temporary attack of sickness. The Colonel and his wife had pressed Lucy to prolong her stay, had asked Sir Karl to come and join her; and they both considered it somewhat unaccountable that Lucy should have persisted in declining. Theresa was alone at Foxwood, was the chief plea of excuse she urged: the real impediment being that she and Karl could not stay at her mother's home together without risk of the terms on which they lived becoming known. So Karl, on the day appointed, went from London to Winchester, and brought Lucy home. For the forbearance she had exercised, the patient silence she had maintained, Lucy had in a degree received the reward during this sojourn with her father and mother. More than ever was it brought home to her conviction then, that she would almost rather have died than betray it. It would have inflicted on them so much pain and shame. It would have lowered herself so in their sight, and in the sight of those old and young friends who had known her in her girlhood, and who whispered their sense of what her happiness must now be, and their admiration of her attractive husband. "Martyrdom rather than that!" said Lucy, clasping her hands with fixed resolution, as she paced the grass, thinking over her visit, on this, the evening of her return. Karl came up to her with two letters in his hand. She was then sitting under the acacia tree. The sun had set, but in the west shone a flood of golden light. The weather in the daytime was still hot as in the middle of that hot summer, but the evenings and nights were cool. Lucy's shawl lay beside her. "It is time to put it on," said Karl--and he wrapped it round her himself carefully. It caused her to see the address of the two letters in his hand. One was to Plunkett and Plunkett; the other to Mrs. Cleeve. "You have been writing to mamma!" she exclaimed.