“Should you recognize him again were you to see him?” resumed Mr. Carlyle awakening from his reverie.
“I think I should. There was something peculiar in his countenance, and I remember it well yet.”
“Were you by chance to meet him, and discover his real name—for I have reason to believe that Thorn, the one he went by then, was an assumed one—will you oblige me by letting me know it?”
“With all the pleasure in life,” replied the major. “The chances are against it though, confined as I am to that confounded sister country. Other regiments get the luck of being quartered in the metropolis, or near it; ours doesn’t.”
When Major Thorn departed, and Mr. Carlyle was about to return to the room where he left his sister, he was interrupted by Joyce.
“Sir,” she began. “Miss Carlyle tells me that there is going to be a change at East Lynne.”
The words took Mr. Carlyle by surprise.
“Miss Carlyle has been in a hurry to tell you,” he remarked—a certain haughty displeasure in his tone.
“She did not speak for the sake of telling me, sir, it is not likely; but I fancy she was thinking about her own plans. She inquired whether I would go with her when she left, or whether I meant to remain at East Lynne. I would not answer her, sir, until I had spoken to you.”
“Well?” said Mr. Carlyle.