“And then?”

“I really do not know,” she said, the rebellious tears rising faster than she could choke them down.  “He has no other home to offer me; but with Lady Mount Severn I cannot and will not remain.  She would break my heart, as she has already well-nigh broken my spirit.  I have not deserved it of her, Mr. Carlyle.”

“No, I am sure you have not,” he warmly answered.  “I wish I could help you!  What can I do?”

“You can do nothing,” she said.  “What can any one do?”

“I wish, I wish I could help you!” he repeated.  “East Lynne was not, take it for all in all, a pleasant home to you, but it seems you changed for the worse when you left.”

“Not a pleasant home?” she echoed, its reminiscences appearing delightful in that moment, for it must be remembered that all things are estimated by comparison.  “Indeed it was; I may never have so pleasant a one again.  Mr. Carlyle, do not disparage East Lynne to me!  Would I could awake and find the last few months but a hideous dream!—­that I could find my dear father alive again!—­that we were still living peacefully at East Lynne.  It would be a very Eden to me now.”

What was Mr. Carlyle about to say?  What emotion was it that agitated his countenance, impeded his breath, and dyed his face blood-red?  His better genius was surely not watching over him, or those words had never been spoken.

“There is but one way,” he began, taking her hand and nervously playing with it, probably unconscious that he did so; “only one way in which you could return to East Lynne.  And that way—­I may not presume, perhaps, to point it out.”

She looked at him and waited for an explanation.

“If my words offend you, Lady Isabel, check them, as their presumption deserves, and pardon me.  May I—­dare I—­offer you to return to East Lynne as its mistress?”

She did not comprehend him in the slightest degree:  the drift of his meaning never dawned upon her.  “Return to East Lynne as its mistress?” she repeated, in bewilderment.

“And as my wife?”

No possibility of misunderstanding him now, and the shock and surprise were great.  She had stood there by Mr. Carlyle’s side conversing confidentially with him, esteeming him greatly, feeling as if he were her truest friend on earth, clinging to him in her heart as to a powerful haven of refuge, loving him almost as she would a brother, suffering her hand to remain in his. But to be his wife! the idea had never presented itself to her in any shape until this moment, and her mind’s first emotion was one of entire opposition, her first movement to express it, as she essayed to withdraw herself and her hand away from him.

But not so; Mr. Carlyle did not suffer it.  He not only retained that hand, but took the other also, and spoke, now the ice was broken, eloquent words of love.  Not unmeaning phrases of rhapsody, about hearts and darts and dying for her, such as somebody else might have given utterance to, but earnest-hearted words of deep tenderness, calculated to win upon the mind’s good sense, as well as upon the ear and heart; and it may be that, had her imagination not been filled up with that “somebody else,” she would have said “Yes,” there and then.