MISS CARLYLE—ISABEL UNHAPPY.
Another year came in. Isabel would have been
altogether happy but for Miss Carlyle; that lady still
inflicted her presence upon East Lynne, and made it
the bane of its household. She deferred outwardly
to Lady Isabel as the mistress; but the real mistress
was herself. Isabel was little more than an automaton.
Her impulses were checked, her wishes frustrated,
her actions tacitly condemned by the imperiously-willed
Miss Carlyle. Poor Isabel, with her refined manners
and her timid and sensitive temperament, had no chance
against the strong-minded woman, and she was in a
state of galling subjection in her own house.
Not a day passed but Miss Carlyle, by dint of hints
and innuendoes, contrived to impress upon Lady Isabel
the unfortunate blow to his own interests that Mr.
Carlyle’s marriage had been, the ruinous expense
she had entailed upon the family. It struck a
complete chill to Isabel’s heart, and she became
painfully impressed with the incubus she must be to
Mr. Carlyle—so far as his pocket was concerned.
Lord Mount Severn, with his little son, had paid them
a short visit at Christmas and Isabel had asked him,
apparently with unconcern, whether Mr. Carlyle had
put himself very much out to the way to marry her;
whether it had entailed on him 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.
