



Produced by Charles Bowen from page scans provided by Google Books










Transcriber's Notes:
     1. Page scan source: Google Books
        https://books.google.com/books?id=0nrlugEACAAJ
        (the Bavarian State Library)






COLLECTION
OF
BRITISH AUTHORS

TAUCHNITZ EDITION.

VOL. 1270.
WITHIN THE MAZE BY MRS. HENRY WOOD.

IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.






WITHIN THE MAZE.
A NOVEL.


BY
MRS. HENRY WOOD,
AUTHOR OF "EAST LYNNE," ETC.


_COPYRIGHT EDITION_.


IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.




LEIPZIG
BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ
1872.

_The Right of Translation is reserved_.






CONTENTS
OF VOLUME I.

CHAPTER
            I. Mrs. Andinnian's Home.
           II. Lucy Cleeve.
          III. Done at Sunset.
           IV. The Trial.
            V. Unable to get strong.
           VI. An Atmosphere of Mystery.
          VII. At the Charing-Cross Hotel.
         VIII. In the Avenue d'Antin.
           IX. Down at Foxwood.
            X. Mrs. Andinnian's Secret.
           XI. At the Gate of the Maze.
          XII. Taking an Evening Stroll.
         XIII. Miss Blake gets in.
          XIV. Miss Blake on the Watch.
           XV. Revealed to Lady Andinnian.
          XVI. A Night at the Maze.
         XVII. Before the World.
        XVIII. A Night Alarm.
          XIX. In the same Train.
           XX. Only one Fly at the Station.
          XXI. Hard to Bear.
         XXII. With his Brother.






WITHIN THE MAZE.




CHAPTER I.
Mrs. Andinnian's Home.


The house was ugly and old-fashioned, with some added modern
improvements, and was surrounded by a really beautiful garden. Though
situated close upon a large market town of Northamptonshire, it stood
alone, excluded from the noise and bustle of the world.

The occupant of this house was a widow lady, Mrs. Andinnian. Her
husband, a post-captain in the Royal Navy, had been dead some years.
She had two sons. The elder, Adam, was of no profession, and lived
with her: the younger, Karl, was a lieutenant in one of Her Majesty's
regiments. Adam was presumptive heir to his uncle, Sir Joseph
Andinnian, a baronet of modern creation: Karl had his profession alone
to look to, and a small private income of two hundred a year.

They were not rich, these Andinnians: though the captain had deemed
himself well-off, what with his private fortune, and what with his
pay. The private fortune was just six hundred a year; the pay not
great: but Captain Andinnian's tastes were simple, his wants few. At
his death it was found that he had bequeathed his money in three equal
parts: two hundred a year to his wife, and two hundred each to his
sons. "Adam and his mother will live together," he said in the will;
"she'd not be parted from him: and four hundred pounds, with her bit
of pension, will be enough for comfort. When Adam succeeds his uncle,
they can make any fresh arrangement that pleases them. But I hope when
that time shall come they will not forget Karl."

Mrs. Andinnian resented the will, and resented these words in it. Her
elder boy, Adam, had always been first and foremost with her: never a
mother loved a son more ardently than she loved him. For Karl she
cared not. Captain Andinnian was not blind to the injustice, and
perhaps thence arose the motive that induced him not to leave his
wife's two hundred pounds of income at her own disposal: when Mrs.
Andinnian died, it would lapse to Karl. The captain had loved his sons
equally: he would willingly have left them equally provided for in
life, and divided the fortune that was to come sometime to Adam. Mrs.
Andinnian, in spite of the expected rise for Adam, would have had him
left better off from his father's means than Karl.

There had been nearly a lifelong feud between the two family
branches. Sir Joseph Andinnian and his brother the captain had not met
for years and years: and it was a positive fact that the latter's sons
had never seen their uncle. For this feud the brothers themselves were
not in the first instance to blame. It did not arise with them, but
with their wives. Both ladies were of a haughty, overbearing, and
implacable temper: they had quarrelled very soon after their first
introduction to each other; the quarrel grew, and grew, and finally
involved the husbands as well in its vortex.

Joseph Andinnian, who was the younger of the two brothers, had been a
noted and very successful civil engineer. Some great work, that he had
originated and completed, gained him his reward--a baronetcy. While he
was in the very flush of his new honours, an accident, that he met
with, laid him for many months upon a sick-bed. Not only that: it
incapacitated him for future active service. So, when he was little
more than a middle-aged man, he retired from his profession, and took
up his abode for life at a pretty estate he had bought in Kent,
called Foxwood Court, barely an hour's railway journey from London: by
express train not much more than half one. Here, he and his wife had
lived since: Sir Joseph growing more and more of an invalid as the
years went on. They had no children; consequently his brother, Captain
Andinnian, was heir to the baronetcy: and, following on Captain
Andinnian, Adam, the captain's eldest son.

Captain Andinnian did not live to succeed. In what seemed the pride of
his health and strength, just after he had landed from a three years'
voyage, and was indulging in ambitious visions of a flag, symptoms of
a mortal disease manifested themselves. He begged of his physicians to
let him know the truth; and they complied--he must expect but a very
few weeks more of life. Captain Andinnian, after taking a day or two
to look matters fully in the face, went up to London, and thence
down to Sir Joseph's house in Kent. The brothers, once face to face,
met as though no ill-blood had ever separated them: hands were
locked in hands, gaze went out to gaze. Both were simple-minded,
earnest-hearted, affectionate-natured men; and but for their wives--to
whom, if the truth must be avowed, each lay in subjection--not a
mis-word would ever have arisen between them.

"I am dying, Joseph," said the captain, when some of their mutual
emotion had worn away. "The doctors tell me so, and I feel it to be
true. Naturally, it has set me on the thought of many things--that I
am afraid I have been too carelessly putting off. What I have come
down to you chiefly for, is to ask about my son--Adam. You'll tell me
the truth, won't you, Joseph, as between brothers?"

"I'll tell you anything, Harry," was Sir Joseph's answer. "The truth
about what?"

"Whether he is to succeed you or not?"

"Why, of course he must succeed: failing yourself. What are you
thinking of, Harry, to ask it? I've no son of my own: it's not likely
I shall have one now. He will be Sir Adam after me."

"It's not the title I was thinking of, Joseph. Failing a direct heir,
I know that must come to him. But the property?--will he have that? It
is not entailed; and you could cut him out absolutely."

"D'ye