Ellen Wood

“ Carlyle mistook its source, and caught her to his heart.
Lady Isabel had returned home to bodily health, to the delight of meeting her children, to the glad sensation of security. But as the days went on, a miserable feeling of apathy stole over her: a feeling as if all whom she had loved in the world had died, leaving her living and alone.
She did not encourage these reflections; knowing what you do know of her, you may be sure of that, but they thrust themselves continually forward. The form of Francis Levison was ever present to her ”

“ Carlyle thither was entered upon immediately—Francis Levison, his debts, and his gracelessness. Sir Peter, an old gentleman in a velvet skullcap, particularly enlarged upon the latter.
"I'd pay his debts to-day and set him upon his legs again, but that I know I should have to do the same thing over and over again to the end of the chapter, as I have done it repeatedly hitherto," cried Sir Peter. "His grandfather was my only brother, his father my dutiful and beloved nephew; but he is just as bad as they were estimable. He is a worthless fellow and nothing else, Mr. Carlyle." ”

“ So I offered to give him house-room at East Lynne for a few days."
There is an old saying, "the heart leaping into the mouth;" and Lady Isabel's leaped into hers. She grew dizzy at the words—her senses seemed momentarily to desert her. Her first sensation was as if the dull earth had opened and shown her a way into Paradise; her second, a lively consciousness that Francis Levison ought not to be suffered to come again into companionship with her. Mr. Carlyle continued to converse of the man's embarrassments, of his own interview with Sir Peter and Lady Levison ”

“ But it is necessary that he should come to England, if his affairs are to be set straight, and also that he should see Sir Peter."
"Come to England!" interrupted Lady Levison. "How can he come to England under present circumstances, unless, indeed, he comes en cachette?"
"En cachette, of course," replied Mr. Carlyle. "There is no other way. I have offered to let him stay at East Lynne. He is, you may be aware, a sort of connection of Lady Isabel's." ”

“ Of all capricious, vain, exacting women, Emma Vane was the worst; and Emma Mount Severn is no improvement upon it; she's a systematic flirt, and nothing better. I drove recklessly on purpose to put her in a fright, and pay her off. ”