t of her thoughts had been violently turned from its
course. Instead of being a young lady of high position, of wealth and
rank, she appeared to herself more in the light of an unfortunate pauper
and interloper in the house she was inhabiting. It has been the custom
in romance to present young ladies, especially if they be handsome and
interesting, as being entirely oblivious of matter-of-fact cares
and necessities, supremely indifferent to future prospects of
poverty--poverty that brings hunger and thirst and cold and nakedness;
but, be assured, this apathy never existed in real life. Isabel Vane's
grief for her father--whom, whatever may have been the aspect he wore
for others, _she_ had deeply loved and reverenced--was sharply poignant;
but in the midst of that grief, and of the singular troubles his death
had brought forth, she could not shut her eyes to her own future.
Its blank uncertainty, its shadowed-forth embarrassments did obtrude
themselves and the words of that plain-speaking creditor kept ringing in
her ears: "You won't have a roof to put your head under, or a guinea to
call your own." Where was she to go? With whom to live? She was in Mr.
Carlyle's house now. And how was she to pay the servants? Money was
owing to them all.

"Mr. Carlyle, how long has this house been yours?" she asked, breaking
the silence.

"It was in June that the purchase was completed. Did Lord Mount Severn
never tell you he had sold it to me?"

"No, never. All these things are yours?" glancing round the room.

"The furniture was sold with the house. Not these sort of things," he
added, his eye falling on the silver on the breakfast table; "not the
plate and linen."

"Not the plate and linen! Then those poor men who were here yesterday
have a right to them," she quickly cried.

"I scarcely know. I believe the plate goes with the entail--and the
jewels go also. The linen cannot be of consequence either way."

"Are my clothes my own?"

He smiled as he looked at her; smiled at her simplicity, and assured her
that they were nobody's else.

"I did not know," she sighed; "I did not understand. So many strange
things have happened in the last day or two, that I seem to understand
nothing."

Indeed, she could not understand. She had no definite ideas on the
subject of this transfer of East Lynne to Mr. Carlyle; plenty of
indefinite ones, and they were haunting her. Fears of debt to him, and
of the house and its contents being han