an expense and a style of living he would not otherwise have
deemed himself justified in affording. Lord Mount Severn's reply was an
unfortunate one: his opinion was, that it had, he said; and that Isabel
ought to feel grateful to him for his generosity. She sighed as she
listened, and from thenceforth determined to put up with Miss Carlyle.

More timid and sensitive by nature than many would believe or can
imagine, reared in seclusion more simply and quietly than falls to the
general lot of peers' daughters, completely inexperienced, Isabel
was unfit to battle with the world--totally unfit to battle with Miss
Carlyle. The penniless state in which she was left at her father's
death, the want of a home save that accorded her at Castle Marling, even
the hundred-pound note left in her hand by Mr. Carlyle, all had imbued
her with a deep consciousness of humiliation, and, far from rebelling at
or despising the small establishment, comparatively speaking, provided
for her by Mr. Carlyle, she felt thankful to him for it. But to be told
continuously that this was more than he could afford, that she was
in fact a blight upon his prospects, was enough to turn her heart to
bitterness. Oh, that she had had the courage to speak out openly to her
husband, that he might, by a single word of earnest love and assurance,
have taken the weight from her heart, and rejoiced it with the
truth--that all these miserable complaints were but the phantoms of his
narrow-minded sister! But Isabel never did; when Miss Corny lapsed into
her grumbling mood, she would hear in silence, or gently bend her aching
forehead in her hands, never retorting.

Never before Mr. Carlyle was the lady's temper vented upon her; plenty
fell to his own share, when he and his sister were alone; and he had
become so accustomed to the sort of thing all his life--had got used to
it, like the eels do to skinning--that it went, as the saying runs, in
at one ear and out at the other, making no impression. He never dreamt
that Isabel also received her portion.

It was a morning early in April. Joyce sat, in its gray dawn, over
a large fire in the dressing-room of Lady Isabel Carlyle, her hands
clasped to pain, and the tears coursing down her cheeks. Joyce was
frightened; she had had some experience in illness; but illness of this
nature she had never witnessed, and she was fervently hoping never to
witness it again. In the adjoining room lay Lady Isabel, sick nearly
unto dea