we sometimes make the remark, or
hear it made to us, "Circumstances worked against it." Such and such
a thing might have turned out differently, we say, had the surrounding
circumstances been more favorable, but they were in opposition; they
were dead against it. Now, if ever attendant circumstances can be said
to have borne a baneful influence upon any person in this world, they
most assuredly did at this present time against Lady Isabel Carlyle.

Coeval, you see, with the arrival of the ex-captain, Levison, at East
Lynne, all the jealous feeling, touching her husband and Barbara Hare,
was renewed, and with greater force than ever. Barbara, painfully
anxious that something should be brought to light, it would have
puzzled her to say how or by what means, by which her brother should be
exonerated from the terrible charge under which he lay; fully believing
that Frederick Thorn, captain in her majesty's service, was the man
who had committed the crime, as asserted by Richard, was in a state of
excitement bordering upon frenzy. Too keenly she felt the truth of her
own words, that she was powerless, that she could, herself, do
nothing. When she rose in the morning, after a night passed in troubled
reflection more than in sleep, her thoughts were, "Oh, that I could
this day find out something certain!" She was often at the Herberts';
frequently invited there--sometimes going uninvited. She and the
Herberts were intimate and they pressed Barbara into all the impromptu
gay doings, now their brother was at home. There she of course saw
Captain Thorn, and now and then she was enabled to pick up scraps of his
past history. Eagerly were these scraps carried to Mr. Carlyle. Not at
his office; Barbara would not appear there. Perhaps she was afraid of
the gossiping tongues of West Lynne, or that her visits might have come
to the knowledge of that stern, prying, and questioning old gentleman
whom she called sire. It may be too, that she feared, if seen haunting
Mr. Carlyle's office, Captain Thorn might come to hear of it and suspect
the agitation, that was afloat--for who could know better than he, the
guilt that was falsely attaching to Richard? Therefore she chose rather
to go to East Lynne, or to waylay Mr. Carlyle as he passed to and from
business. It was little she gathered to tell him; one evening she met
him with the news that Mr. Thorn _had_ been in former years at West
Lynne, though she could not fix the date; another time s