“Handsome is not the word for beauty such as
hers,” was Mr. Carlyle’s reply, in a low,
warm tone. “I never saw a face half so beautiful.”
“She caused quite a sensation at the drawing-room
last week—as I hear. This everlasting
gout kept me indoors all day. And she is as good
as she is beautiful.”
The earl was not partial. Lady Isabel was wondrously
gifted by nature, not only in mind and person but
in heart. She was as little like a fashionable
young lady as it was well possible to be, partly because
she had hitherto been secluded from the great world,
partly from the care bestowed upon her training.
During the lifetime of her mother, she had lived occasionally
at East Lynne, but mostly at a larger seat of the
earl’s in Wales, Mount Severn; since her mother’s
death, she had remained entirely at Mount Severn,
under the charge of a judicious governess, a very
small establishment being kept for them, and the earl
paying them impromptu and flying visits. Generous
and benevolent she was, timid and sensitive to a degree,
gentle, and considerate to all. Do not cavil
at her being thus praised—admire and love
her whilst you may, she is worthy of it now, in her
innocent girlhood; the time will come when such praise
would be misplaced. Could the fate that was to
overtake his child have been foreseen by the earl,
he would have struck her down to death, in his love,
as she stood before him, rather than suffer her to
enter upon it.
The broken cross.
Lady Isabel’s carriage continued its way, and
deposited her at the residence of Mrs. Levison.
Mrs. Levison was nearly eighty years of age, and very
severe in speech and manner, or, as Mrs. Vane expressed
it, “crabbed.” She looked the image
of impatience when Isabel entered, with her cap pushed
all awry, and pulling at the black satin gown, for
Mrs. Vane had kept her waiting dinner, and Isabel
was keeping her from her tea; and that does not agree
with the aged, with their health or with their temper.
“I fear I am late,” exclaimed Lady Isabel,
as she advanced to Mrs. Levison; “but a gentleman
dined with papa to-day, and it made us rather longer
at table.”
“You are twenty-five minutes behind your time,”
cried the old lady sharply, “and I want my tea.
Emma, order it in.”
Mrs. Vane rang the bell, and did as she was bid.
She was a little woman of six-and-twenty, very plain
in face, but elegant in figure, very accomplished,
and vain to her fingers’ ends. Her mother,
who was dead, had been Mrs. Levison’s daughter,
and her husband, Raymond Vane, was presumptive heir
to the earldom of Mount Severn.
“Won’t you take that tippet off, child?”
asked Mrs. Levison, who knew nothing of the new-fashioned
names for such articles, mantles, burnous, and all
the string of them; and Isabel threw it off and sat
down by her.
“The tea is not made, grandmamma!” exclaimed
Mrs. Vane, in an accent of astonishment, as the servant
appeared with the tray and the silver urn. “You
surely do not have it made in the room.”
