xtravagance, under
her reduced circumstances. "As soon as ever the baby can walk, I shall
manage to do with one."

The earl looked confounded. "The baby!" he uttered, in a tone of
astonishment and grief painful to her to hear. "Isabel, is there a
child?"

Not less painful was her own emotion as she hid her face. Lord Mount
Severn rose and paced the room with striding steps.

"I did not know it! I did not know it! Wicked, heartless villain!
He ought to have married you before its birth. Was the divorce out
previously?" he asked stopping short in his strides to put the question.

"Yes."

"Coward! Sneak! May good men shun him from henceforth! May his queen
refuse to receive him! You, an earl's daughter! Oh, Isabel, how utterly
you have lost yourself!"

Lady Isabel started from her chair in a burst of hysterical sobs, her
hands extended beseechingly toward the earl. "Spare me! Spare me! You
have been rending my heart ever since you came; indeed I am too weak to
bear it."

The earl, in truth, had been betrayed into showing more of his
sentiments than he intended. He recalled his recollection.

"Well, well, sit down again, Isabel," he said, putting her into her
chair. "We shall go to the point I chiefly came here to settle. What sum
will it take you to live upon? Quietly; as of course you would now wish
to live, but comfortably."

"I will not accept anything," she replied. "I will get my own living."
And the earl's irascibility again arose at the speech. He spoke in a
sharp tone.

"Absurd, Isabel! Do not add romantic folly to your own mistakes. Get
your own living, indeed! As much as is necessary for you to live upon,
I shall supply. No remonstrance; I tell you I am acting as for your
father. Do you suppose he would have abandoned you to starve or to
work?"

The allusion touched every chord within her bosom, and the tears fell
fast. "I thought I could get my living by teaching," she sobbed.

"And how much did you anticipate the teaching would bring you in?"

"Not very much," she listlessly said. "A hundred a year, perhaps; I am
very clever at music and singing. That sum might keep us, I fancy, even
if I only went out by the day."

"And a fine 'keep' it would be! You shall have that sum every quarter!"

"No, no! no, no! I do not deserve it; I could not accept it; I have
forfeited all claim to assistance."

"Not to mine. Now, it is of no use to excite yourself, my mind is made
up. I never willingly forego