They were suddenly interrupted.  Lady Mount Severn entered, and took in the scene at a glance; Mr. Carlyle’s bent attitude of devotion, his imprisonment of the hands, and Isabel’s perplexed and blushing countenance.  She threw up her head and her little inquisitive nose, and stopped short on the carpet; her freezing looks demanded an explanation, as plainly as looks can do it.  Mr. Carlyle turned to her, and by way of sparing Isabel, proceeded to introduce himself.  Isabel had just presence of mind left to name her:  “Lady Mount Severn.”

“I am sorry that Lord Mount Severn should be absent, to whom I have the honor of being known,” he said.  “I am Mr. Carlyle.”

“I have heard of you,” replied her ladyship, scanning his good looks, and feeling cross that his homage should be given where she saw it was given, “but I had not heard that you and Lady Isabel Vane were on the extraordinary terms of intimacy that—­that——­”

“Madam,” he interrupted as he handed a chair to her ladyship and took another himself, “we have never yet been on terms of extraordinary intimacy.  I was begging the Lady Isabel to grant that we may be; I was asking her to become my wife.”

The avowal was as a shower of incense to the countess, and her ill humor melted into sunshine.  It was a solution to her great difficulty, a loophole by which she might get rid of her bete noire, the hated Isabel.  A flush of gratification lighted her face, and she became full of graciousness to Mr. Carlyle.

“How very grateful Isabel must feel to you,” quoth she.  “I speak openly, Mr. Carlyle, because I know that you were cognizant of the unprotected state in which she was left by the earl’s improvidence, putting marriage for her, at any rate, a high marriage, nearly out of the question.  East Lynne is a beautiful place, I have heard.”

“For its size; it is not large,” replied Mr. Carlyle, as he rose for Isabel had also risen and was coming forward.

“And pray what is Lady Isabel’s answer?” quickly asked the countess, turning to her.

Not to her did Isabel condescend to give an answer, but she approached Mr. Carlyle, and spoke in a low tone.

“Will you give me a few hours for consideration?”

“I am only too happy that you should accord it consideration, for it speaks to me of hope,” was his reply, as he opened the door for her to pass out.  “I will be here again this afternoon.”

It was a perplexing debate that Lady Isabel held with herself in the solitude of her chamber, whilst Mr. Carlyle touched upon ways and means to Lady Mount Severn.  Isabel was little more than a child, and as a child she reasoned, looking neither far nor deep:  the shallow palpable aspect of affairs alone presenting itself to her view.  That Mr. Carlyle was not of rank equal to her own, she scarcely remembered; East Lynne seemed a very fair settlement in life, and in point of size, beauty and importance, it was