He smiled as he looked at her; smiled at her simplicity, and assured her that they were nobody's else.

"I did not know," she sighed; "I did not understand. So many strange things have happened in the last day or two, that I seem to understand nothing."

Indeed, she could not understand. She had no definite ideas on the subject of this transfer of East Lynne to Mr. Carlyle; plenty of indefinite ones, and they were haunting her. Fears of debt to him, and of the house and its contents being handed over to him in liquidation, perhaps only partial, were working in her brain.

"Does my father owe you any money?" she breathed in a timid tone.

"Not any," he replied. "Lord Mount Severn was never indebted to me in his life."

"Yet you purchased East Lynne?"

"As any one else might have done," he answered, discerning the drift of her thoughts. "I was in search of an eligible estate to invest money in, and East Lynne suited me."

"I feel my position, Mr. Carlyle," she resumed, the rebellious fears forcing themselves to her eyes; "thus to be intruding upon you for a shelter. And I cannot help myself."