East Lynne Part 26

THE EARL'S ASTONISHMENT.

The announcement of the marriage in the newspapers was the first intimation of it Lord Mount Severn received. He was little less thunderstruck than Miss Corny, and came steaming to England the same day, thereby missing his wife's letter, which gave her version of the affair. He met Mr. Carlyle and Lady Isabel in London, where they were staying at one of the west-end hotels--only for a day or two, however, for they were going further. Isabel was alone when the earl was announced.

"What is the meaning of this, Isabel?" began he, without the circ.u.mlocution of greeting. "You are married?"

"Yes," she answered, with her pretty, innocent blush. "Some time ago."

"And to Carlyle, the lawyer! How did it come about?"

Isabel began to think how it did come about, sufficiently to give a clear answer. "He asked me," she said, "and I accepted him. He came to Castle Marling at Easter, and asked me then. I was very much surprised."

The earl looked at her attentively. "Why was I kept in ignorance of this, Isabel?"

"I did not know you were kept in ignorance of it. Mr. Carlyle wrote to you, as did Lady Mount Severn."

Lord Mount Severn was a man in the dark, and looked like it. "I suppose this comes," soliloquized he, aloud, "of your father's having allowed the gentleman to dance daily attendance at East Lynne. And so you fell in love with him."

"Indeed, no!" answered she, in an amused tone. "I never thought of such a thing as falling in love with Mr. Carlyle."

"Then don't you love him?" abruptly asked the earl.

"No!" she whispered, timidly; "but I like him much--oh, very much! And he is so good to me!"

The earl stroked his chin and mused. Isabel had destroyed the only reasonable conclusion he had been able to come to as to the motives for the hasty marriage. "If you do not love Mr. Carlyle, how comes it that you are so wise in the distinction between 'liking' and 'love?' It cannot be that you love anybody else?"

The question turned home, and Isabel turned crimson. "I shall love my husband in time," was all she answered, as she bent her head, and played nervously with her watch chain.

"My poor child!" involuntarily exclaimed the earl. But he was one who liked to fathom the depth of everything. "Who has been staying at Castle Marling since I left?" he asked sharply.

"Mrs. Levison came down."

"I alluded to gentlemen--young men."

"Only Francis Levison," she replied.

"Francis Levison! You have never been so foolish as to fall in love with him?"

The question was so pointed, so abrupt, and Isabel's self-consciousness, moreover, so great, that she betrayed lamentable confusion, and the earl had no further need to ask. Pity stole into his hard eyes as they fixed themselves on her downcast, glowing face.

"Isabel," he gravely began, "Captain Levison is not a good man; if ever you were inclined to think him one, dispossess your mind of the idea, and hold him at arm's distance. Drop his acquaintance--encourage no intimacy with him."

"I have already dropped it," said Isabel, "and I shall not take it up again. But Lady Mount Severn must think well of him, or she would not have him there."

"She thinks none too well of him; none can of Francis Levison," returned the earl significantly.

Before Isabel could reply, Mr. Carlyle entered. He held out his hand to the earl; the earl did not appear to see it.

"Isabel," said he, "I am sorry to turn you out, but I suppose you have but this one sitting-room. I wish to say a few words to Mr. Carlyle."

She quitted them, and the earl wheeled round and faced Mr. Carlyle, speaking in a stern, haughty tone.

"How came this marriage about, sir? Do you possess so little honor, that, taking advantage of my absence, you must intrude yourself into my family, and clandestinely espouse Lady Isabel Vane?"

Mr. Carlyle stood confounded, and confused. He drew himself up to his full height, looking every whit as fearless and far more n.o.ble than the peer. "My lord, I do not understand you."

"Yet I speak plainly. What is it but a clandestine procedure to take advantage of a guardian's absence and beguile a young girl into a marriage beneath her?"

"There has been nothing clandestine in my conduct toward Lady Isabel Vane; there shall be nothing but honor in my conduct toward Lady Isabel Carlyle. Your lordship has been misinformed."

"I have not been informed at all," retorted the earl. "I was allowed to learn this from the public papers--I, the only relative of Lady Isabel."

"When I proposed for Lady Isabel--"

"But a month ago," sarcastically interrupted the earl.

"But a month ago," calmly repeated Mr. Carlyle, "my first action, after Isabel accepted me, was to write to you. But that I imagine you may not have received the letter, by stating you first heard of our marriage through the papers, I should say, the want of courtesy lay on your lordship's side for having vouchsafed me no reply to it."

"What were the contents of the letter?"

"I stated what had occurred, mentioning what I was able to do in the way of settlements, and also that both Isabel and myself wished the ceremony to take place as soon as might be."

"And pray where did you address the letter?"

"Lady Mount Severn could not give me the address. She said if I would intrust the letter to her, she would forward it with the rest she wrote, for she expected daily to hear from you. I did give her the letter, and I heard no more of the matter, except that her ladyship sent me a message when Isabel was writing to me, that as you had returned no reply, you of course approved."

"Is this the fact?" cried the earl.

"My lord," coldly replied Mr. Carlyle, "whatever may be my defects in your eyes, I am at least a man of truth. Until this moment, the suspicion that you were in ignorance of the contemplated marriage never occurred to me."

"So far, then, I beg your pardon, Mr. Carlyle. But how came the marriage about at all--how came it to be hurried over in this unseemly fashion?

You made the offer at Easter, Isabel tells me, and you married her three weeks after it."

"And I would have married her and brought her away with me the day I did make it, had it been practicable," returned Mr. Carlyle. "I have acted throughout for her comfort and happiness."

"Oh, indeed!" exclaimed the earl, returning to his disagreeable tone.

"Perhaps you will put me in possession of the facts, and of your motives."

"I warn you that the facts to you will not bear a pleasant sound, Lord Mount Severn."

"Allow me to be the judge of that," said the earl.

"Business took me to Castle Marling on Good Friday. On the following day I called at your house; after your own and Isabel's invitation, it was natural I should; in fact, it would have been a breach of good feeling not to do so, I found Isabel ill-treated and miserable; far from enjoying a happy home in your house--"

"What, sir?" interrupted the earl. "Ill-treated and miserable?"

"Ill-treated even to blows, my lord."

The earl stood as one petrified, staring at Mr. Carlyle.