“Can I do anything for you, madame?” she asked.

Lady Isabel declined.  In the first moments of her arrival she was dreading detection—­how was it possible that she should not—­and she feared Joyce’s keen eyes more, perhaps than she feared any others.  She was only wishing that the girl would go down.

“Should you want anything, please to ring, and Hannah will come up,” said Joyce, preparing to retire.  “She is the maid who waits upon the gray parlor, and will do anything you like up here.”

Joyce had quitted the room, and Lady Isabel had got her bonnet off, when the door opened again.  She hastily thrust it on, somewhat after the fashion of Richard Hare’s rushing on his hat and false whiskers.  It was Joyce.

“Do you think you shall find your way down alone, madame?”

“Yes, I can do that,” she answered.  Find her way in that house!

Lady Isabel slowly took her things off.  What was the use of lingering—­she must meet their eyes, sooner or later.  Though, in truth, there was little, if any, fear of her detection, so effectually was she disguised by nature’s altering hand, or by art’s.  It was with the utmost difficulty she kept tranquil.  Had the tears once burst forth, they would have gone on to hysterics, without the possibility of control.  The coming home again to East Lynne!  Oh, it was indeed a time of agitation, terrible, painful agitation, and none can wonder at it.  Shall I tell you what she did?  Yes, I will at the expense of ridicule.  She knelt down by the bed and prayed for courage to go through the task she had undertaken; prayed for self-control—­even she, the sinful, who had quitted that house under circumstances notorious.  But I am not sure that this mode of return to it was an expedition precisely calculated to call down a blessing.

There was no excuse for lingering longer, and she descended, the waxlight in her hand.  Everything was ready in the gray parlor—­the tea-tray on the table, the small urn hissing away, the tea-caddy in proximity to it.  A silver rack of dry toast, butter, and a hot muffin covered with a small silver cover.  The things were to her sight as old faces—­the rack, the small cover, the butter-dish, the tea-service—­she remembered them all; not the urn—­a copper one—­she had no recollection of that.  It had possibly been bought for the use of the governess, when a governess came into use at East Lynne.  Could she have given herself leisure to reflect on the matter, she might have told, by the signs observable in the short period she had been in the house, that governesses of East Lynne were regarded as gentlewomen—­treated well and liberally.  Yes; for East Lynne owned Mr. Carlyle for its master.

She made the tea, and sat down with what appetite she might, her brain, her thoughts, all in a chaos together.  She wondered whether Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle were at dinner—­she wondered in what part of the house were the children.  She heard bells ring now and then; she heard servants cross and recross the hall.  Her meal over, she rang her own.