“Joyce!” sternly interrupted Mr. Carlyle.

“She has destroyed herself, as true as that we two are living here,” persisted Joyce, her own face livid with emotion.  “I can understand her words now; I could not before.  She came here—­and her face was like a corpse as the light fell upon it—­saying she had come to get a promise from me to stay with her children when she was gone, I asked whether she was ill, and she answered, ‘Yes, ill and wretched.’  Oh, sir, may heaven support you under this dreadful trial!”

Mr. Carlyle felt bewildered—­perplexed.  Not a syllable did he believe.  He was not angry with Joyce, for he thought she had lost her reason.

“It is so, sir, incredible as you may deem my words,” pursued Joyce, wringing her hands.  “My lady has been miserably unhappy; and that has driven her to it.”

“Joyce, are you in your senses or out of them?” demanded Mr. Carlyle, a certain sternness in his tone.  “Your lady miserably unhappy!  What do you mean?”

Before Joyce could answer, an addition was received to the company in the person of Miss Carlyle, who appeared in black stockings and a shawl, and the lofty nightcap.  Hearing voices in Joyce’s room, which was above her own, and full of curiosity, she ascended, not choosing to be shut out from the conference.

“Whatever’s up?” cried she.  “Is Lady Isabel found?”

“She is not found, and she never will be found but in her winding-sheet,” returned Joyce, whose lamentable and unusual state of excitement completely overpowered her customary quiet respect and plain good sense.  “And, ma’am, I am glad that you have come up; for what I was about to say to my master I would prefer to say in your presence.  When my lady is brought into this house, and laid before us dead, what will your feelings be?  My master has done his duty by her in love; but you—­you have made her life a misery.  Yes, ma’am, you have.”

“Hoity-toity!” muttered Miss Carlyle, staring at Joyce in consternation.  “What is all this?  Where’s my lady?”

“She has gone and taken the life that was not hers to take,” sobbed Joyce, “and I say she has been driven to it.  She has not been allowed to indulge a will of her own, poor thing, since she came to East Lynne; in her own house she has been less free than either of her servants.  You have curbed her, ma’am, and snapped at her, and you made her feel that she was but a slave to your caprices and temper.  All these years she has been crossed and put upon; everything, in short, but beaten—­ma’am, you know she has—­and has borne it all in silence, like a patient angel, never, as I believe, complaining to master; he can say whether she has or not.  We all loved her, we all felt for her; and my master’s heart would have bled had he suspected what she had to put up with day after day, and year after year.”

Miss Carlyle’s tongue was glued to her mouth.  Her brother, confounded at the rapid words, could scarcely gather in their sense.