第42章

"You can do nothing," she said. "What can any one do?"

"I wish, I wish I could help you!" he repeated. "East Lynne was not, take it for all in all, a pleasant home to you, but it seems you changed for the worse when you left."

"Not a pleasant home?" she echoed, its reminiscences appearing delightful in that moment, for it must be remembered that all things are estimated by comparison. "Indeed it was; I may never have so pleasant a one again. Mr. Carlyle, do not disparage East Lynne to me!

Would I could awake and find the last few months but a hideous dream!

--that I could find my dear father alive again!--that we were still living peacefully at East Lynne. It would be a very Eden to me now."

What was Mr. Carlyle about to say? What emotion was it that agitated his countenance, impeded his breath, and dyed his face blood-red? His better genius was surely not watching over him, or those words had never been spoken.

"There is but one way," he began, taking her hand and nervously playing with it, probably unconscious that he did so; "only one way in which you could return to East Lynne. And that way--I may not presume, perhaps, to point it out."

She looked at him and waited for an explanation.

"If my words offend you, Lady Isabel, check them, as their presumption deserves, and pardon me. May I--dare I--offer you to return to East Lynne as its mistress?"

She did not comprehend him in the slightest degree: the drift of his meaning never dawned upon her. "Return to East Lynne as its mistress?" she repeated, in bewilderment.

"And as my wife?"

No possibility of misunderstanding him now, and the shock and surprise were great. She had stood there by Mr. Carlyle's side conversing confidentially with him, esteeming him greatly, feeling as if he were her truest friend on earth, clinging to him in her heart as to a powerful haven of refuge, loving him almost as she would a brother, suffering her hand to remain in his. /But to be his wife!/ the idea had never presented itself to her in any shape until this moment, and her mind's first emotion was one of entire opposition, her first movement to express it, as she essayed to withdraw herself and her hand away from him.

But not so; Mr. Carlyle did not suffer it. He not only retained that hand, but took the other also, and spoke, now the ice was broken, eloquent words of love. Not unmeaning phrases of rhapsody, about hearts and darts and dying for her, such as somebody else might have given utterance to, but earnest-hearted words of deep tenderness, calculated to win upon the mind's good sense, as well as upon the ear and heart; and it may be that, had her imagination not been filled up with that "somebody else," she would have said "Yes," there and then.

They were suddenly interrupted. Lady Mount Severn entered, and took in the scene at a glance; Mr. Carlyle's bent attitude of devotion, his imprisonment of the hands, and Isabel's perplexed and blushing countenance. She threw up her head and her little inquisitive nose, and stopped short on the carpet; her freezing looks demanded an explanation, as plainly as looks can do it. Mr. Carlyle turned to her, and by way of sparing Isabel, proceeded to introduce himself. Isabel had just presence of mind left to name her: "Lady Mount Severn."

"I am sorry that Lord Mount Severn should be absent, to whom I have the honor of being known," he said. "I am Mr. Carlyle."

"I have heard of you," replied her ladyship, scanning his good looks, and feeling cross that his homage should be given where she saw it was given, "but I had /not/ heard that you and Lady Isabel Vane were on the extraordinary terms of intimacy that--that----"

"Madam," he interrupted as he handed a chair to her ladyship and took another himself, "we have never yet been on terms of extraordinary intimacy. I was begging the Lady Isabel to grant that we may be; I was asking her to become my wife."

The avowal was as a shower of incense to the countess, and her ill humor melted into sunshine. It was a solution to her great difficulty, a loophole by which she might get rid of her /bete noire/, the hated Isabel. A flush of gratification lighted her face, and she became full of graciousness to Mr. Carlyle.

"How very grateful Isabel must feel to you," quoth she. "I speak openly, Mr. Carlyle, because I know that you were cognizant of the unprotected state in which she was left by the earl's improvidence, putting marriage for her, at any rate, a high marriage, nearly out of the question. East Lynne is a beautiful place, I have heard."

"For its size; it is not large," replied Mr. Carlyle, as he rose for Isabel had also risen and was coming forward.

"And pray what is Lady Isabel's answer?" quickly asked the countess, turning to her.

Not to her did Isabel condescend to give an answer, but she approached Mr. Carlyle, and spoke in a low tone.

"Will you give me a few hours for consideration?"