“Aye. It cannot be pleasant for you to remain under the eyes of its inhabitants. You were here with him, were you not?”
“They think I am his wife,” she murmured. “The servants think it.”
“That’s well, so far. How many servants have you?”
“Two. I am not strong enough yet to do much myself, so am obliged to keep two,” she continued, as if in apology for the extravagance, under her reduced circumstances. “As soon as ever the baby can walk, I shall manage to do with one.”
The earl looked confounded. “The baby!” he uttered, in a tone of astonishment and grief painful to her to hear. “Isabel, is there a child?”
Not less painful was her own emotion as she hid her face. Lord Mount Severn rose and paced the room with striding steps.
“I did not know it! I did not know it! Wicked, heartless villain! He ought to have married you before its birth. Was the divorce out previously?” he asked stopping short in his strides to put the question.
“Yes.”
“Coward! Sneak! May good men shun him from henceforth! May his queen refuse to receive him! You, an earl’s daughter! Oh, Isabel, how utterly you have lost yourself!”
Lady Isabel started from her chair in a burst of hysterical sobs, her hands extended beseechingly toward the earl. “Spare me! Spare me! You have been rending my heart ever since you came; indeed I am too weak to bear it.”