gone mad.
You were one of the last whom I should have feared to trust. But I
learned nothing, and Carlyle was as ignorant as I. How could you strike
him such a blow?"

Lower and lower drooped her head, brighter shone the shame on her hectic
cheek. An awful blow to Mr. Carlyle it must have been; she was feeling
it in all its bitter intensity. Lord Mount Severn read her repentant
looks.

"Isabel," he said, in a tone which had lost something of its harshness,
and it was the first time he had called her by her Christian name, "I
see that you are reaping the fruits. Tell me how it happened. What demon
prompted you to sell yourself to that bad man?"

"He is a bad man!" she exclaimed. "A base, heartless man!"

"I warned you at the commencement of your married life to avoid him; to
shun all association with him; not to admit him to your house."

"His coming to East Lynne was not my doing," she whispered. "Mr. Carlyle
invited him."

"I know he did. Invited him in his unsuspicious confidence, believing
his wife to _be_ his wife, a trustworthy woman of honor," was the severe
remark.

She did not reply; she could not gainsay it; she only sat with her meek
face of shame and her eyelids drooping.

"If ever a woman had a good husband, in every sense of the word, you
had, in Carlyle; if ever man loved his wife, he loved you. _How_ could
you so requite him?"

She rolled, in a confused manner, the corners of her warm shawl over her
unconscious fingers.

"I read the note you left for your husband. He showed it to me; the
only one, I believe, to whom he did show it. It was to him entirely
inexplicable, it was so to me. A notion had been suggested to him, after
your departure, that his sister had somewhat marred your peace at East
Lynne, and he blamed you much, if it was so, for not giving him your
full confidence on the point, that he might set matters on the right
footing. But it was impossible, and there was the evidence in the note
besides, that the presence of Miss Carlyle at East Lynne could be any
excuse for your disgracing us all and ruining yourself."

"Do not let us speak of these things," said Lady Isabel, faintly. "It
cannot redeem the past."

"But I must speak of them; I came to speak of them," persisted the earl;
"I could not do it as long as that man was here. When these inexplicable
things take place in the career of a woman, it is a father's duty
to look into motives and causes and actions, although the even