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A shade of disdain crossed his lips. She was equivocating to him on her death-bed.

“Do not look in that way,” she panted. “My strength is nearly gone—you must perceive that it is—and I do not, perhaps, express myself clearly. I loved you dearly, and I grew suspicious of you. I thought you were false and deceitful to me; that your love was all given to another; and in my sore jealousy, I listened to the temptings of that bad man, who whispered to me of revenge. It was not so, was it?”

Mr. Carlyle had regained his calmness, outwardly, at any rate. He stood by the side of the bed, looking down upon her, his arms crossed upon his chest, and his noble form raised to its full height.

“Was it so?” she feverishly repeated.

“Can you ask it, knowing me as you did then, as you must have known me since? I never was false to you in thought, in word, or in deed.”

“Oh, Archibald, I was mad—I was mad! I could not have done it in anything but madness. Surely you will forget and forgive!”

“I cannot forget. I have already forgiven!”

“Try and forget the dreadful time that has passed since that night!” she continued, the tears falling on her cheeks, as she held up to him one of her poor hot hands. “Let your thoughts go back to the days when you first knew me; when I was here, Isabel Vane, a happy girl with my father. At times I have lost myself in a moment’s happiness in thinking of it. Do you remember how you grew to love me, though you thought you might not tell it to me—and how gentle you were with me, when papa died—and the hundred pound note? Do you remember coming to Castle Marling?—and my promise to be your wife—and the first kiss you left upon my lips? And, oh, Archibald! Do you remember the loving days after I was your wife—how happy we were with each other? Do you remember when Lucy was born, we thought I should have died; and your joy, your thankfulness that God restored me? Do you remember all this?”

Aye. He did remember it. He took the poor hand into his, and unconsciously played with its wasted fingers.

“Have you any reproach to cast to me?” he gently said, bending his head a little.

“Reproach to you! To you, who must be almost without reproach in the sight of Heaven! You, who were everlasting to me—ever anxious for my welfare! When I think of what you were, and are, and how I quitted you, I could sink into the earth with remorse and shame. My own sin, I have surely expiated; I cannot expiate the shame I entailed upon you, and upon our children.”

Never. He felt it as keenly now as he had felt it then.

“Think what it has been for me!” she resumed, and he was obliged to bend his ear to catch her gradually weakening tones. “To live in this house with your wife—to see your love for her—to watch the envied caresses that once were mine! I never loved you so passionately as I have done since I lost you. Think what it was to watch William’s decaying strength; to be alone with him in his dying hour, and not to be able to say he is my child as well as yours! When he lay dead, and the news went forth to the household, it was her petty grief you soothed, not mine, his mother’s. God alone knows how I have lived through it all; it has been to me as the bitterness of death.”

“Why did you come back?” was the response of Mr. Carlyle.

“I have told you. I could not live, wanting you and my children.”

“It was wrong; wrong in all ways.”

“Wickedly wrong. You cannot think worse of it than I have done. But the consequences and the punishment would be mine alone, as long as I guarded against discovery. I never thought to stop here to die; but death seems to have come on me with a leap, like it came to my mother.”

A pause of labored hard breathing. Mr. Carlyle did not interrupt it.

“All wrong, all wrong,” she resumed; “this interview with you, among the rest. And yet—I hardly know; it cannot hurt the new ties you have formed, for I am as one dead now to this world, hovering on the brink of the next. But you were my husband, Archibald; and, the last few days, I have longed for your forgiveness with a fevered longing. Oh! that the past could be blotted out! That I could wake up and find it but a hideous dream; that I were here as in old days, in health and happiness, your ever loving wife. Do you wish it, that the dark past had never had place?”

She put the question in a sharp, eager tone, gazing up to him with an anxious gaze, as though the answer must be one of life or death.

“For your sake I wish it.” Calm enough were the words spoken; and her eyes fell again, and a deep sigh came forth.

“I am going to William. But Lucy and Archibald will be left. Oh, do you never be unkind to them! I pray you, visit not their mother’s sin upon their heads! Do not in your love for your later children, lose your love for them!”

“Have you seen anything in my conduct that could give rise to fears of this?” he returned, reproach mingled in his sad tone. “The children are dear to me, as you once were.”

“As I once was. Aye, and as I might have been now.”

“Indeed you might,” he answered, with emotion. “The fault was not mine.”

“Archibald, I am on the very threshold of the next world. Will you not bless me—will you not say a word of love to me before I pass it! Let what I am, I say, be blotted for the moment from your memory; think of me, if you can, as the innocent, timid child whom you made your wife. Only a word of love. My heart is breaking for it.”

He leaned over her, he pushed aside the hair from her brow with his gentle hand, his tears dropping on her face. “You nearly broke mine, when you left me, Isabel,” he whispered.

“May God bless you, and take you to His rest in Heaven! May He so deal with me, as I now fully and freely forgive you.”

What was he about to do? Lower and lower bent his head, until his breath nearly mingled with hers. To kiss her? He best knew. But, suddenly, his face grew red with a scarlet flush, and he lifted it again. Did the form of one, then in a felon’s cell at Lynneborough, thrust itself before him, or that of his absent and unconscious wife?

“To His rest in Heaven,” she murmured, in the hollow tones of the departing. “Yes, yes I know that God has forgiven me. Oh, what a struggle it has been! Nothing but bad feelings, rebellion, and sorrow, and repining, for a long while after I came back here, but Jesus prayed for me, and helped me, and you know how merciful He is to the weary and heavy-laden. We shall meet again, Archibald, and live together forever and ever. But for that great hope I could hardly die. William said mamma would be on the banks of the river, looking out for him; but it is William who is looking for me.”

Mr. Carlyle released one of his hands; she had taken them both; and with his own white handkerchief, wiped the death-dew from her forehead.

“It is no sin to anticipate it, Archibald, for there will be no marrying or giving in marriage in Heaven: Christ said so. Though we do not know how it will be, my sin will be remembered no more there, and we shall be together with our children forever and forever. Keep a little corner in your heart for your poor lost Isabel.”

“Yes, yes,” he whispered.

“Are you leaving me?” she uttered, in a wild tone of pain.

“You are growing faint, I perceive, I must call assistance.”

“Farewell, then; farewell, until eternity,” she sighed, the tears raining from her eyes. “It is death, I think, not faintness. Oh! but it is hard to part! Farewell, farewell my once dear husband!”

She raised her head from the pillow, excitement giving her strength; she clung to his arm; she lifted her face in its sad yearning. Mr. Carlyle laid her tenderly down again, and suffered his wet cheek to rest upon hers.

“Until eternity.”

She followed him with her eyes as he retreated, and watched him from the room: then turned her face to the wall. “It is over. Only God now.”

Mr. Carlyle took an instant’s counsel with himself, stopping at the head of the stairs to do it. Joyce, in obedience to a sign from him, had already gone into the sick-chamber: his sister was standing at the door.

“Cornelia.”

She followed him down to the dining-room.

“You will remain here to-night? With her?”

“Do you suppose I shouldn’t?” crossly responded Miss Corny; “where are you off to now?”

“To the telegraph office, at present. To send for Lord Mount Severn.”

“What good can he do?”

“None. But I shall send for him.”

“Can’t one of the servants go just as well as you? You have not finished your dinner; hardly begun it.”

He turned his eyes on the dinner-table in a mechanical sort of way, his mind wholly preoccupied, made some remark in answer, which Miss Corny did not catch, and went out.

On his return his sister met him in the hall, drew him inside the nearest room, and closed the door. Lady Isabel was dead. Had been dead about ten minutes.

“She never spoke after you left her, Archibald. There was a slight struggle at the last, a fighting for breath, otherwise she went off quite peacefully. I felt sure, when I first saw her this afternoon, that she could not last till midnight.”

CHAPTER XLVII
I. M. V

Lord Mount Severn, wondering greatly what the urgent summons could be for, lost no time in obeying it, and was at East Lynne the following morning early. Mr. Carlyle had his carriage at the station—his close carriage—and shut up in that he made the communication to the earl as they drove to East Lynne.

The earl could with difficulty believe it. Never had he been so utterly astonished. At first he really could not understand the tale.

“Did she—did she—come back to your house to die?” he blundered. “You never took her in? I don’t understand.”

Mr. Carlyle explained further; and the earl at length understood. But he did not recover his perplexed astonishment.

“What a mad act to come back here. Madame Vine! How on earth did she escape detection?”

“She did escape it,” said Mr. Carlyle. “The strange likeness Madame Vine possessed to my first wife did often strike me as being marvelous, but I never suspected the truth. It was a likeness, and not a likeness, for every part of her face and form was changed except her eyes, and those I never saw but through those disguising glasses.”

The earl wiped his hot face. The news had ruffled him no measured degree. He felt angry with Isabel, dead though she was, and thankful that Mrs. Carlyle was away.

“Will you see her?” whispered Mr. Carlyle as they entered the house.

“Yes.”

They went up to the death-chamber, Mr. Carlyle procuring the key. It was the only time that he entered it. Very peaceful she looked now, her pale features so composed under her white cap and hands. Miss Carlyle and Joyce had done all that was necessary; nobody else had been suffered to approach her. Lord Mount Severn leaned over her, tracing the former looks of Isabel; and the likeness grew upon him in a wonderful degree.

“What did she die of?” he asked.

“She said a broken heart.”

“Ah!” said the earl. “The wonder is that it did not break before. Poor thing! Poor Isabel!” he added, touching her hand, “how she marred her own happiness! Carlyle, I suppose this is your wedding ring?”

Mr. Carlyle cast his eyes upon the ring. “Very probably.”

“To think of her never having discarded it!” remarked the earl, releasing the cold hand. “Well, I can hardly believe the tale now.”

He turned and quitted the room as he spoke. Mr. Carlyle looked steadfastly at the dead face for a minute or two, his fingers touching the forehead; but what his thoughts or feelings may have been, none can tell. Then he replaced the sheet over her face, and followed the earl.

They descended in silence to the breakfast-room. Miss Carlyle was seated at the table waiting for them. “Where could all your eyes have been?” exclaimed the earl to her, after a few sentences, referring to the event just passed.

“Just where yours would have been,” replied Miss Corny, with a touch of her old temper. “You saw Madame Vine as well as we did.”

“But not continuously. Only two or three times in all. And I do not remember ever to have seen her without her bonnet and veil. That Carlyle should not have recognized her is almost beyond belief.”

“It seems so, to speak of it,” said Miss Corny; “but facts are facts. She was young and gay, active, when she left here, upright as a dart, her dark hair drawn from her open brow, and flowing on her neck, her cheeks like crimson paint, her face altogether beautiful. Madame Vine arrived here a pale, stooping woman, lame of one leg, shorter than Lady Isabel—and her figure stuffed out under those sacks of jackets. Not a bit, scarcely, of her forehead to be seen, for gray velvet and gray bands of hair; her head smothered under a close cap, large, blue, double spectacles hiding the eyes and their sides, and the throat tied up; the chin partially. The mouth was entirely altered in its character, and that upward scar, always so conspicuous, made it almost ugly. Then she had lost some of her front teeth, you know, and she lisped when she spoke. Take her for all in all,” summed up Miss Carlyle, “she looked no more like Isabel who went away from here than I look like Adam. Just get your dearest friend damaged and disguised as she was, my lord, and see if you’d recognize him.”

The observation came home to Lord Mount Severn. A gentleman whom he knew well, had been so altered by a fearful accident, that little resemblance could be traced to his former self. In fact, his own family could not recognize him: and he used an artificial disguise. It was a case in point; and—reader—I assure you it was a true one.

“It was the disguise that we ought to have suspected,” quietly observed Mr. Carlyle. “The likeness was not sufficiently striking to cause suspicion.”

“But she turned the house from that scent as soon as she came into it,” struck in Miss Corny, “telling of the ‘neuralgic pains’ that affected her head and face, rendering the guarding them from exposure necessary. Remember, Lord Mount Severn, that the Ducies had been with her in Germany, and had never suspected her. Remember also another thing, that, however great a likeness we may have detected, we could not and did not speak of it, one to another. Lady Isabel’s name is never so much as whispered among us.”

“True: all true,” nodded the earl. And they sat themselves down to breakfast.

On the Friday, the following letter was dispatched to Mrs. Carlyle.

“MY DEAREST—I find I shall not be able to get to you on Saturday afternoon, as I promised, but will leave here by the late train that night. Mind you don’t sit up for me. Lord Mount Severn is here for a few days; he sends his regards to you.

“And now, Barbara, prepare for news that will prove a shock. Madame Vine is dead. She grew rapidly worse, they tell me, after our departure, and died on Wednesday night. I am glad you were away.

“Love from the children. Lucy and Archie are still at Cornelia’s; Arthur wearing out Sarah’s legs in the nursery.

“Ever yours, my dearest,

“ARCHIBALD CARLYLE.”

Of course, as Madame Vine, the governess, died at Mr. Carlyle’s house, he could not, in courtesy, do less than follow her to the grave. So decided West Lynne, when they found which way the wind was going to blow. Lord Mount Severn followed also, to keep him company, being on a visit to him, and very polite, indeed, of his lordship to do it—condescending, also! West Lynne remembered another funeral at which those two had been the only mourners—that of the earl. By some curious coincidence the French governess was buried close to the earl’s grave. As good there as anywhere else, quoth West Lynne. There happened to be a vacant spot of ground.

The funeral took place on a Sunday morning. A plain, respectable funeral. A hearse and pair, and mourning coach and pair, with a chariot for the Rev. Mr. Little. No pall-bearers or mutes, or anything of that show-off kind; and no plumes on the horses, only on the hearse. West Lynne looked on with approbation, and conjectured that the governess had left sufficient money to bury herself; but, of course, that was Mr. Carlyle’s affair, not West Lynne’s. Quiet enough lay she in her last resting-place.

They left her in it, the earl and Mr. Carlyle, and entered the mourning-coach, to be conveyed back again to East Lynne.

“Just a little stone of white marble, two feet high by a foot and a half broad,” remarked the earl, on their road, pursuing a topic they were speaking upon. “With the initials ‘I. V.’ and the date of the year. Nothing more. What do you think?”

“I. M. V.,” corrected Mr. Carlyle.

“Yes.”

At this moment the bells of another church, not St. Jude’s, broke out in a joyous peal, and the earl inclined his ear to listen.

“What can they be ringing for?” he cried.

They were ringing for a wedding. Afy Hallijohn, by the help of two clergymen and six bridesmaids, of which you may be sure Joyce was not one, had just been converted into Mrs. Joe Jiffin. When Afy took a thing into her head, she somehow contrived to carry it through, and to bend even clergymen and bridesmaids to her will. Mr. Jiffin was blest at last.

In the afternoon the earl left East Lynne, and somewhat later Barbara arrived at it. Wilson scarcely gave her mistress time to step into the house before her, and she very nearly left the baby in the fly. Curiously anxious was Wilson to hear all particulars as to whatever could have took off that French governess. Mr. Carlyle was much surprised at their arrival.

“How could I stay away, Archibald, even until Monday, after the news you sent me?” said Barbara. “What did she die of? It must have been awfully sudden.”

“I suppose so,” was his dreamy answer. He was debating a question with himself, one he had thought over a good deal since Wednesday night. Should he, or should he not, tell his wife? He would have preferred not to tell her; and, were the secret confined to his own breast, he would decidedly not have done so. But it was known to three others—to Miss Carlyle, to lord Mount Severn, and to Joyce. All trustworthy and of good intention; but it was impossible for Mr. Carlyle to make sure that not one of them would ever, through any chance and unpremeditated word, let the secret come to the knowledge of Mrs. Carlyle. That would not do, if she must hear it at all, she must hear it from him, and at once. He took his course.

“Are you ill, Archibald?” she asked, noting his face. It wore a pale, worn sort of look.

“I have something to tell you, Barbara,” he answered, drawing her hand into his, as they stood together. They were in her dressing-room, where she was taking off her things. “On the Wednesday evening when I got home to dinner Joyce told me that she feared Madame Vine was dying, and I thought it right to see her.”

“Certainly,” returned Barbara. “Quite right.”

“I went into her room, and I found that she was dying. But I found something else, Barbara. She was not Madame Vine.”

“Not Madame Vine!” echoed Barbara, believing in good truth that her husband could not know what he was saying.

“It was my former wife, Isabel Vane.”

Barbara’s face flushed crimson, and then grew white as marble; and she drew her hand unconsciously from Mr. Carlyle’s. He did not appear to notice the movement, but stood with his elbow on the mantelpiece while he talked, giving her a rapid summary of the interview and its details.

“She could not stay away from her children, she said, and came back as Madame Vine. What with the effects of the railroad accident in France, and those spectacles she wore, and her style of dress, and her gray hair, she felt secure in not being recognized. I am astonished now that she was not discovered. Were such a thing related to me I should give no credence to it.”

Barbara’s heart felt faint with its utter sickness, and she turned her face from the view of her husband. Her first confused thoughts were as Mr. Carlyle’s had been—that she had been living in his house with another wife. “Did you suspect her?” she breathed, in a low tone.

“Barbara! Had I suspected it, should I have allowed it to go on? She implored my forgiveness for the past, and for having returned here, and I gave it to her fully. I then went to West Lynne, to telegraph to Mount Severn, and when I came back she was dead.”

There was a pause. Mr. Carlyle began to perceive that his wife’s face was hidden from him.

“She said her heart was broken. Barbara, we cannot wonder at it.”

There was no reply. Mr. Carlyle took his arm from the mantelpiece, and moved so that he could see her countenance: a wan countenance, telling of pain.

He laid his hand upon her shoulder, and made her look at him. “My dearest, what is this?”

“Oh, Archibald!” she uttered, clasping her hands together, all her pent up feelings bursting forth, and the tears streaming from her eyes, “has this taken your love from me?”

He took both her hands in one of his, he put the other round her waist and held her there, before him, never speaking, only looking gravely into her face. Who could look at its sincere truthfulness, at the sweet expression of his lips, and doubt him? Not Barbara. She allowed the moment’s excitement to act upon her feelings, and carry her away.

“I had thought my wife possessed entire trust in me.”

“Oh, I do, I do; you know I do. Forgive me, Archibald,” she slowly whispered.

“I deemed it better to impart this to you, Barbara. Had there been wrong feeling on my part, I should have left you in ignorance. My darling, I have told you it in love.”

She was leaning on his breast, sobbing gently, her repentant face turned towards him. He held her there in his strong protection, his enduring tenderness.

“My wife! My darling! now and always.”

“It was a foolish feeling to cross my heart, Archibald. It is done with and gone.”

“Never let it come back, Barbara. Neither need her name be mentioned again between us. A barred name it has hitherto been; so let it continue.”

“Anything you will. My earnest wish is to please you; to be worthy of your esteem and love, Archibald,” she timidly added, her eye-lids drooping, and her fair cheeks blushing, as she made the confession. “There has been a feeling in my heart against your children, a sort of jealous feeling, you can understand, because they were hers; because she had once been your wife. I knew how wrong it was, and I have tried earnestly to subdue it. I have, indeed, and I think it is nearly gone,” her voice sunk. “I constantly pray to be helped to do it; to love them and care for them as if they were my own. It will come with time.”

“Every good thing will come with time that we may earnestly seek,” said Mr. Carlyle. “Oh, Barbara, never forget—never forget that the only way to ensure peace in the end is to strive always to be doing right, unselfishly under God.”