THE REAL CHARLOTTE 
 
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 NEW YORK, BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS 
 
T HE' ' 
 
 REAL CHARLOTTE 
 
 BY 
 
 E. GE. SOMERVILLE & MARTIN ROSS 
 
 NEW IMPRESSION 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 
 FOURTH AVENUE & 30x H STREET, NEW YORK 
 
 BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS 
 
 1919 
 
First published by Ward 6 Downey, in 3 volumes in 1894.) 
 and in one volume in 1895. Transferred to Longmans, Green 
 & Co. and reprinted by them in November, 1900, December, 
 1901, and November, 1903. Reissued in uniform edition 
 October, 1910; reprinted May, 1911, June, 1915, March, 1918. 
 September 1919. 
 
 Made in Great Britain 
 
THE REAL CHARLOTTE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 AN August Sunday afternoon in the north side of Dublin. 
 Epitome of all that is hot, arid, and empty. Tall brick 
 houses, browbeating each other in gloomy respectability 
 across the white streets; broad pavements, promenaded 
 mainly by the nomadic cat; stifling squares, wherein the 
 infant of unfashionable parentage is taken for the daily 
 baking that is its substitute for the breezes and the press of 
 perambulators on the Bray Esplanade or the Kingston pier. 
 Few towns are duller out of the season than Dublin, but 
 the dullness of its north side neither waxes nor wanes ; it is 
 immutable, unchangeable, fixed as the stars. So at least 
 it appears to the observer whose impressions are only eye- 
 deep, and are derived from the emptiness of the streets, the 
 unvarying dirt of the window panes, and the almost for- 
 gotten type of ugliness of the window curtains. 
 
 But even an August Sunday in the north side has its 
 distractions for those who know where to seek them, and 
 there are some of a sufficiently ingenuous disposition to find 
 in Sunday-school a social excitement that is independent of 
 fashion, except so far as its slow eddies may have touched 
 the teacher's bonnet. Perhaps it is peculiar to Dublin that 
 Sunday-school, as an institution, is by no means reserved 
 for children of the poorer sort only, but permeates all ranks v 
 and has as many recruits from the upper and middle as 
 from the lower classes. Certainly the excellent Mrs. Fitz- 
 patrick, of Number O, Mountjoy Square, as she lay in 
 mountainous repose on the sofa in her dining-room, had 
 no thought that it was derogatory to the dignity of her 
 
 A 
 
 505235 
 
Tfa &eal Charlotte. 
 
 daughters and her niece to sit, as they were now sitting, 
 between the children of her grocer, Mr. Mulvany, and her 
 chemist, Mr. Nolan. Sunday-school was, in her mind, an 
 admirable institution that at one and the same time cleared 
 her house of her offspring, and spared her the complica- 
 tions of their religious training, and her broad, black satin- 
 clad bosom rose and fell in rhythmic accord with the snores 
 that were the last expression of Sabbath peace and repose. 
 
 It was nearly four o'clock, and the heat and dull clamour 
 in the schoolhouse were beginning to tell equally upon 
 teachers and scholars. Francie Fitzpatrick had yawned 
 twice, though she had a sufficient sense of politeness to 
 conceal the action behind her Bible; the pleasure of 
 thrusting out in front of her, for the envious regard of her 
 fellows, a new pair of side spring boots, with mock buttons 
 and stitching, had palled upon her ; the spider that had for 
 a few quivering moments hung uncertainly above the gor- 
 geous bonnet of Miss Bewley, the teacher, had drawn itself 
 up again, staggered, no doubt, by the unknown tropic 
 growths it found beneath ; and the silver ring that Tommy 
 Whitty had crammed upon her gloved finger before school, 
 as a mark of devotion, had become perfectly immovable 
 and was a source of at least as much anxiety as satisfaction. 
 Even Miss Bewley's powers of exposition had melted away 
 in the heat ; she had called out her catechetical reserves, 
 and was reduced to a dropping fire of questions as to the 
 meaning of Scriptural names, when at length the superin- 
 tendent mounted the rostrum and tapped thrice upon it. 
 The closing hymn was sung, and then, class by class, the 
 hot, tired children clattered out into the road. 
 
 On Francie rested the responsibility of bringing home 
 her four small cousins, of ages varying from six to eleven, 
 but this duty did not seem to weigh very heavily on her. 
 She had many acquaintances in the Sunday-school, and 
 with Susie Brennan's and Fanny Hemphill's arms round 
 her waist, and Tommy Whitty in close attendance, she was 
 in no hurry to go home. Children are, if unconsciously, 
 as much influenced by good looks as their elders, and even 
 the raw angularities of fourteen, and Mrs. Fitzpatrick's taste 
 in hats, could not prevent Francie from looking extremely 
 pretty and piquante, as she held forth to an attentive 
 
The Reai, Charf^ts. 3 
 
 audience on the charms of a young man who had on that 
 day partaken of an early dinner at her Uncle Fitzpatrick's 
 house. 
 
 Francie's accent and mode of expressing herself were 
 alike deplorable ; Dublin had done its worst for her in that 
 respect, but unless the reader has some slight previous 
 notion of how dreadful a thing is a pure-bred Dublin accent, 
 it would be impossible for him to realise in any degree the 
 tone in which she said : 
 
 " But oh ! Tommy Whitty ! wait till I tell you what he 
 said about the excursion ! He said he'd come to it if I'd 
 promise to stay with him the whole day ; so now, see how 
 grand I'll be ! And he has a long black mustash ! " she 
 concluded, as a side thrust at Tommy's smooth, apple 
 cheeks. 
 
 " Oh, indeed, I'm sure he's a bewty without paint," re- 
 turned the slighted Tommy, with such sarcasm as he could 
 muster ; " but unless you come in the van with me, the way 
 you said you would, I'll take me ring back from you and 
 give it to Lizzie Jemmison ! So now ! " 
 
 " Much I care ! " said Francie, tossing her long golden 
 plait of hair, and giving a defiant skip as she walked ; " and 
 what's more, I can't get it off, and nobody will till I die ! 
 and so now yourself ! " 
 
 Her left hand was dangling over Fanny Hemphill's 
 shoulder, and she thrust it forward, starfish-wise, in front of 
 Tommy Whitty's face. The silver ring glittered sumptu- 
 ously on its background of crimson silk glove, and the sud- 
 den snatch that her swain made at it was as much impelled 
 by an unworthy desire to repossess the treasure as by the 
 pangs of wounded affection. 
 
 " G'long, ye dirty fella' ! " screamed Francie, in high 
 good-humour, at the same moment eluding {he snatch and 
 whirling herself free from the winding embrace of the 
 Misses Hemphill and Brennan ; " I dare ye to take it from 
 me!" 
 
 She was off like a lapwing down the deserted street, pur- 
 sued by the more cumbrous Tommy, and by the encourag- 
 ing yells of the children, who were trooping along the 
 pavement after them. Francie was lithe and swift beyond 
 her fellows, and on ordinary occasions Tommy Whitty, with 
 
Charlotte. 
 
 all his masculine advantage of costume and his two years of 
 seniority, would have found it as much as he could do to 
 catch her. But on this untoward day the traitorous new 
 side spring boots played her false. That decorative band 
 of white stitching across the toes began to press upon her 
 like a vice, and, do what she would, she knew that she 
 could not keep her lead much longer. Strategy was her 
 only resource. Swinging herself round a friendly lamp-post, 
 she stopped short with a suddenness that compelled her 
 pursuer to shoot past her, and with an inspiration whose 
 very daring made it the more delirious, she darted across 
 the street, and sprang into a milk-cart that was waiting at a 
 door. The meek white horse went on at once, and, with a 
 breathless, goading hiss to hasten him, she tried to gather 
 up the reins. Unfortunately, however, it happened that 
 these were under his tail, and the more she tugged at them 
 the tighter he clasped them to him, and the more lively be- 
 came his trot. In spite of an irrepressible alarm as to the 
 end of the adventure, Francie still retained sufficient pres- 
 ence of mind to put out her tongue at her baffled enemy, 
 as, seated in front of the milk-cans, she clanked past him 
 and the other children. There was a chorus, in tones vary- 
 ing from admiration to horror, of, " Oh ! look at Francie 
 Fitzpatrick ! " and then Tommy Whitty's robuster accents, 
 " Ye'd better look out ! the milkman's after ye ! " 
 
 Francie looked round, and with terror beheld that func- 
 tionary in enraged pursuit. It was vain to try blandish- 
 ments with the horse, now making for his stable at a good 
 round trot; vainer still to pull at the reins. They were 
 nearing the end of the long street, and Francie and the 
 milkman, from their different points of view, were feeling 
 equally helpless and despairing, when a young man came 
 round the corner, and apparently taking in the situation at 
 a glance, ran out into the road, and caught the horse by the 
 bridle. 
 
 " Well, upon my word, Miss Francie," he said, as Miss 
 Fitzpatrick hurriedly descended from the cart. " You're a 
 nice young lady ! What on earth are you up to now ? " 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Lambert " began Francie; but having got 
 thus far in her statement, she perceived the justly incensed 
 milkman close upon her. and once more taking to her heels, 
 
The Real Charlotte. $ 
 
 she left her rescuer to return the stolen property with what 
 explanations he could. Round the corner she fled, and 
 down the next street, till a convenient archway offered a 
 hiding-place, and sheltering there, she laughed, now that 
 the stress of terror was off her, till her blue eyes streamed 
 with tears. 
 
 Presently she heard footsteps approaching, and peering 
 cautiously out, saw Lambert striding along with the four 
 Fitzpatrick children dancing round him, in their anxiety to 
 present each a separate version of the escapade. The 
 milkman was not to be seen, and Francie sallied forth to 
 meet the party, secretly somewhat abashed, but resolved to 
 bear an undaunted front before her cousins. 
 
 The "long black mustash," so adroitly utilised by Francie 
 for the chastening of Tommy Whitty, was stretched in a 
 wide smile as she looked tentatively at its owner. " Will 
 he tell Aunt Tish ? " was the question that possessed her as 
 she entered upon her explanation. The children might be 
 trusted. Their round, white-lashed eyes had witnessed 
 many of her exploits, and their allegiance had never faltered; 
 but this magnificent grown-up man, who talked to Aunt 
 Tish and Uncle Robert on terms of equality, what trouble 
 might he not get her into in his stupid desire to make a 
 good story of it ? " Botheration to him ! " she thought, 
 " why couldn't he have been somebody else ? " 
 
 Mr. Roderick Lambert marched blandly along beside 
 her, with no wish to change places with anyone agitating 
 his bosom. His handsome brown eyes rested approvingly 
 on Francie's flushed face, and the thought that mainly 
 occupied his mind was surprise that Nosey Fitzpatrick 
 should have had such a pretty daughter. He was aware of 
 Francie's diffident glances, but thought they were due to 
 his good looks and his new suit of clothes, and he became 
 even more patronising than before. At last, quite uncon- 
 sciously, he hit the dreaded point. 
 
 " Well, and what do you think your aunt will say when 
 she hears how I found you running away in the milk-cart ? " 
 
 " I don't know," replied Francie, getting very red. 
 
 1 ' Well, what will >ou say to me if I don't tell her ? " 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Lambert, sure you won't tell mamma ! " en 
 treated the Fitzpatrick children, faithful to their leader, 
 
6 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 " Francie'd be killed if mamma thought she was playing with 
 Tommy Whitty ! " 
 
 They were nearing the Fitzpatrick mansion by this time, 
 and Lambert stood still at the foot of the steps and looked 
 down at the small group of petitioners with indulgent self- 
 satisfaction. 
 
 " Well, Francie, what'll you do for me if I don't tell ? " 
 
 Francie walked stiffly up the steps. 
 
 "I don't know." Then with a defiance that she was far 
 from feeling, " You may tell her if you like ! " 
 
 Lambert laughed easily as he followed her up the steps. 
 
 "You're very angry with me now, aren't you? Well, never 
 mind, we'll be friends, and I won't tell on you this time." 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE east wind was crying round a small house in the out- 
 skirts of an Irish country town. At nightfall it had stolen 
 across the grey expanse of Lough Moyle, and given its first 
 shudder among the hollies and laurestinas that hid the 
 lower windows of Tally Ho Lodge from the too curious 
 passer-by, and at about two o'clock of the November night 
 it was howling so inconsolably in the great tunnel of the 
 kitchen chimney, that Norry the Boat, sitting on a heap or 
 turf by the kitchen fire, drew her shawl closer about her 
 shoulders, and thought gruesomely of the Banshee. 
 
 The long trails of the monthly roses tapped and scratched 
 against the window panes, so loudly sometimes that two 
 cats, dozing on the rusty slab of a disused hothearth, opened 
 their eyes and stared, with the expressionless yet wholly 
 alert scrutiny of their race. The objects in the kitchen were 
 scarcely more than visible in the dirty light of a hanging 
 lamp, and the smell of paraffin filled the air. High presses 
 and a dresser lined the walls, and on the top of the dresser, 
 close under the blackened ceiling, it was just possible to 
 make out the ghostly sleeping form of a cockatoo. A door 
 at the end of the kitchen opened into a scullery of the usual 
 prosaic, not to say odorous kind, which was now a cavern 
 of darkness, traversed by twin green stars that moved to and 
 fro as the lights move on a river at night, and looked like 
 
The Real Charlotte. 7 
 
 anything but what they were, the eyes of cats prowling round 
 a scullery sink. 
 
 The tall, yellow-faced clock gave the gurgle with which it 
 was accustomed to mark the half-hour, and the old woman, 
 as if reminded of her weariness, stretched out her arms and 
 yawned loudly and dismally. 
 
 She put back the locks of greyish-red hair that hung over 
 her forehead, and, crouching over the fireplace, she took out 
 of the embers a broken-nosed tea-pot, and proceeded to pour 
 from it a mug of tea, black with long stewing. She had 
 taken a few sips of it when a bell rang startlingly in the 
 passage outside, jarring the silence of the house with its 
 sharp outcry. Norry the Boat hastily put down her mug, 
 and scrambled to her feet to answer its summons. She 
 groped her way up two cramped flights of stairs that creaked 
 under her as she went, and advanced noiselessly in her 
 stockinged feet across a landing to where a chink of light 
 came from under a door. 
 
 The door was opened as she came to it, and a woman's 
 short thick figure appeared in the doorway. 
 
 " The mistress wants to see Susan," this person said in a 
 rough whisper ; " is he in the house ? " 
 
 " I think he's below in the scullery/ 1 returned Norry j 
 " but, my Law ! Miss Charlotte, what does she want of 
 him ? Is it light in her head she is ? " 
 
 " What's that to you ? Go fetch him at once," replied 
 Miss Charlotte, with a sudden fierceness. She shut the 
 door, and Norry crept downstairs again, making a kind of 
 groaning and lamenting as she went. 
 
 Miss Charlotte walked with a heavy step to the fireplace. 
 A lamp was burning dully on a table at the foot of an old- 
 fashioned bed, and the high foot-board threw a shadow that 
 made it difficult to see the occupant of the bed. It was an 
 ordinary little shabby bedroom; the ceiling, seamed with 
 cracks, bulged down till it nearly touched the canopy of the 
 bed. The wall paper had a pattern of blue flowers on a 
 yellowish background ; over the chimney - shelf a filmy 
 antique mirror looked strangely refined in the company of 
 the Christmas cards and discoloured photographs that 
 leaned against it. There was no sign of poverty, but every- 
 thing was dingy, everything was tasteless, from the worn 
 
8 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 Kidderminster carpet to the illuminated text that was pinned 
 to the wall facing the bed. 
 
 Miss Charlotte gave the fire a frugal poke, and lit a 
 candle in the flame provoked from the sulky coals. In 
 doing so some ashes became embedded in the grease, and 
 taking a hair-pin from the ponderous mass of brown hair 
 that was piled on the back of her head, she began to scrape 
 the candle clean. Probably at no moment of her forty 
 years of life had Miss Charlotte Mullen looked more 
 startlingly plain than now, as she stood, her squat figure 
 draped in a magenta flannel dressing-gown, and the candle 
 light shining upon her face. The night of watching had 
 left its traces upon even her opaque skin. The lines about 
 her prominent mouth and chin were deeper than usual ; her 
 broad cheeks had a flabby pallor ; only her eyes were bright 
 and untired, and the thick yellow-white hand that manipu- 
 lated the hair-pin was as deft as it was wont to be. 
 
 When the flame burned clearly she took the candle to 
 the bedside, and, bending down, held it close to the face of 
 the old woman who was lying there. The eyes opened and 
 turned towards the overhanging face : small, dim, blue 
 eyes, full of the stupor of illness, looking out of the patheti- 
 cally commonplace little old face with a far-away perplexity. 
 
 " Was that Francie that was at the door ? " she said in a 
 drowsy voice that had in it the lagging drawl of intense 
 weakness. 
 
 Charlotte took the tiny wrist in her hand, and felt the 
 pulse with professional attention. Her broad, perceptive 
 finger-tips gauged the forces of the little thread that was 
 jerking in the thin network of tendons, and as she laid the 
 hand down she said to herself, " She'll not last out the turn 
 of the night." 
 
 " Why doesn't Francie come in ? " murmured the old 
 woman again in the fragmentary, unin fleeted voice that 
 seems hardly spared from the unseen battle with death. 
 
 "It wasn't her you asked me for at all," answered 
 Charlotte. "You said you wanted to say good-bye to 
 Susan. Here, you'd better have a sip of this." 
 
 The old woman swallowed some brandy and water, and 
 the stimulant presently revived unexpected strength in her, 
 
 "Charlotte," she said, "it isn't cats we should be think 
 
The Real Charlotte. 9 
 
 ing of now. God knows the cats are safe with you. But 
 little Francie, Charlotte ; we ought to have done more for 
 her. You promised me that if you got the money you'd 
 look after her. Didn't you now, Charlotte? I wish I'd 
 done more for her. She's a good little thing a good little 
 thing " she repeated dreamily. 
 
 Few people would think it worth their while to dispute 
 the wandering futilities of an old dying woman, but even at 
 this eleventh hour Charlotte could not brook the revolt of a 
 slave. 
 
 " Good little thing ! " she exclaimed, pushing the brandy 
 bottle noisily in among a crowd of glasses and medicine 
 bottles, " a strapping big woman of nineteen ! You didn't 
 think her so good the time you had her here, and she put 
 Susan's father and mother in the well ! " 
 
 The old lady did not seem to understand what she had 
 
 " Susan, Susan ! n she called quaveringly, and feebly 
 patted the crochet quilt. 
 
 As if in answer, a hand fumbled at the door and opened 
 it softly. Norry was standing there, tall and gaunt, holding 
 in her apron, with both hands, something that looked like 
 an enormous football. 
 
 " Miss Charlotte ! " she whispered hoarsely, " here's Susan 
 for ye. He was out in the ashpit, an' I was hard set to get 
 him, he was that wild." 
 
 Even as she spoke there was a furious struggle in the 
 blue apron. 
 
 " God in Heaven ! ye fool ! " ejaculated Charlotte. 
 " Don't let him go ! " She shut the door behind Norry. 
 " Now, give him to me." 
 
 Norry opened her apron cautiously, and Miss Charlotte 
 lifted out of it a large grey tom-cat. 
 
 " Be quiet, my heart's love," she said, " be quiet." 
 
 The cat stopped kicking and writhing, and, sprawling up 
 on to the shoulder of the magenta dressing-gown, turned a 
 fierce grey face upon his late captor. Norry crept over to 
 the bed, and put back the dirty chintz curtain that had been 
 drawn forward to keep out the draught of the door. Mrs. 
 Mullen was lying very still ; she had drawn her knees up in 
 front of her, and the bedclothes hung sharply from the small 
 
10 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 point that they made. The big living old woman took the 
 hand of the other old woman who was so nearly dead, and 
 pressed her lips to it. 
 
 " Ma'am, d'ye know me ? " 
 
 Her mistress opened her eyes. 
 
 " Norry," she whispered, " give Miss Francie some jam 
 for her tea to-night, but don't tell Miss Charlotte." 
 
 " What's that she's saying ? " said Charlotte, going to the 
 other side of the bed. " Is she asking for me ? " 
 
 " No, but for Miss Francie," Norry answered. 
 
 "She knows as well as I do that Miss Francie's in Dublin," 
 said Charlotte roughly ; " 'twas Susan she was asking for 
 last. Here, a'nt, here's Susan for you." 
 
 She pulled the cat down from her shoulder, and put him 
 on the bed, where he crouched with a twitching tail, pre- 
 pared for flight at a moment's notice. 
 
 He was within reach of the old lady's hand, but she did 
 not seem to know that he was there. She opened her eyes 
 and looked vacantly round. 
 
 "Where's little Francie? You mustn't send her away, 
 Charlotte ; you promised you'd take care of her ; didn't you, 
 Charlotte ? " 
 
 "Yes, yes," said Charlotte quickly, pushing the cat towards 
 the old lady ; " never fear, I'll see after her." 
 
 Old Mrs. Mullen's eyes, that had rested with a filmy stare 
 on her niece's face, closed again, and her head began to 
 move a little from one side to the other, a low monotonous 
 moan coming from her lips with each turn. Charlotte took 
 her right hand and laid it on the cat's brindled back. It 
 rested there, unconscious, for some seconds, while the two 
 women looked on in silence, and then the fingers drooped 
 and contracted like a bird's claw, and the moaning ceased. 
 There was at the same time a spasmodic movement of the 
 gathered-up knees, and a sudden rigidity fell upon the small 
 insignificant face. 
 
 Norry the Boat threw herself upon her knees with a howl, 
 and began to pray loudly. At the sound the cat leaped to 
 the floor, and the hand that had been placed upon him in 
 the only farewell his mistress was to take, dropped stiffly on 
 the bed. Miss Charlotte snatched up the candle, and held 
 it close to her aunt's face. There was no mistaking what 
 
The Real Charlotte. II 
 
 she saw there, and, putting down the candle again, she 
 plucked a large silk handkerchief from her pocket, and, with 
 some hideous preliminary heavings of her shoulders, burst 
 into transports of noisy grief. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 A DAMP winter and a chilly spring had passed in their usual 
 mildly disagreeable manner over that small Irish country 
 town which was alluded to in the beginning of the last 
 chapter. The shop windows had exhibited their usual 
 zodiacal succession, and had progressed through red com- 
 forters and woollen gloves, to straw hats, tennis shoes, and 
 coloured Summer Numbers. The residents of Lismoyle 
 were already congratulating each other on having "set" their 
 lodgings to the summer visitors ; the steamer was plying on 
 the lake, the militia was under canvas, and on this very 
 fifteenth of June, Lady Dysart of Bruff was giving her first 
 lawn-tennis party. 
 
 Miss Charlotte Mullen had taken advantage of the occa- 
 sion to emerge from the mourning attire that since her aunt's 
 death had so misbecome her sallow face, and was driving 
 herself to Bruff in the phaeton that had been Mrs. Mullen's, 
 and a gown chosen with rather more view to effect than was 
 customary with her. She was under no delusion as to her 
 appearance, and, early recognising its hopeless character, 
 she had abandoned all superfluities of decoration. A habit 
 of costume so defiantly simple as to border on eccentricity 
 had at least two advantages ; it freed her from the absurdity 
 of seeming to admire herself, and it was cheap. During the 
 late Mrs. Mullen's lifetime Charlotte had studied economy. 
 The most reliable old persons had, she was wont to reflect, 
 a slippery turn in them where their wills were concerned, 
 and it was well to be ready for any contingency of fortune. 
 Things had turned out very well after all ; there had been 
 one inconvenient legacy that " Little Francie " to whom 
 the old lady's thoughts had turned, happily too late for her 
 to give any practical emphasis to them but that bequest 
 was of the kind that may be repudiated if desirable. The 
 rest of the disposition had been admirably convenient, and, 
 
 
12 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 in skilled hands, something might even be made of that 
 legacy. Miss Mullen thought a great deal about her legacy 
 and the steps she had taken with regard to it as she drove 
 to Bruff. The horse that drew her ancient phaeton moved 
 with a dignity befitting his eight and twenty years ; the three 
 miles of level lake-side road between Lismoyle and Bruff 
 were to him a serious undertaking, and by the time he had 
 arrived at his destination, his mistress's active mind had 
 pursued many pleasant mental paths to their utmost limit. 
 
 This was the first of the two catholic and comprehensive 
 entertainments that Lady Dysart's sense of her duty towards 
 her neighbours yearly impelled her to give, and when 
 Charlotte, wearing her company smile, came down the steps 
 of the terrace to meet her hostess, the difficult revelry was 
 at its height. Lady Dysart had cast her nets over a wide 
 expanse, and the result was not encouraging. She stood, 
 tall, dark and majestic, on the terrace, surveying the im- 
 practicable row of women that stretched, forlorn of men, 
 along one side of the tennis grounds, much as Cassandra 
 might have scanned the beleaguering hosts from the ram- 
 parts of Troy ; and as she advanced to meet her latest guest, 
 her strong, clear-eyed face was perplexed and almost tragic. 
 
 " How do you do, Miss Mullen ? " she said in tones of 
 unconcealed gloom. " Have you ever seen so few men in 
 your life ? and there are five and forty women ! I cannot 
 imagine where they have all come from, but I know where 
 I wish they would take themselves to, and that is to the 
 bottom of the lake ! " 
 
 The large intensity of Lady Dysart's manner gave unin- 
 tended weight to her most trivial utterance, and had she 
 reflected very deeply before she spoke, it might have oc- 
 curred to her that this was not a specially fortunate manner 
 of greeting a female guest. But Charlotte understood that 
 nothing personal was intended ; she knew that the freedom 
 of Bruff had been given to her, and that she could afford to 
 listen to abuse of the outer world with the composure of one 
 of the inner circle. 
 
 " Well, your ladyship," she said, in the bluff, hearty voice 
 which she felt accorded best with the theory of herself that 
 she had built up in Lady Dysart's mind, " I'll head a forlorn 
 hope to the bottom of the lake for you, and welcome ; but 
 
The Real Charlotte. 13 
 
 for the honour of the house, you might give me a cup o' tay 
 first ! " 
 
 Charlotte had many tones of voice, according with the 
 many facets of her character, and when she wished to be 
 playful she affected a vigorous brogue, not perhaps being 
 aware that her own accent scarcely admitted of being 
 strengthened. 
 
 This refinement of humour was probably wasted on Lady 
 Dysart. She was an Englishwoman, and, as such, was con- 
 stitutionally unable to discern perfectly the subtle grades of 
 Irish vulgarity. She was aware that many of the ladies on 
 her visiting list were vulgar, but it was their subjects of 
 conversation and their opinions that chiefly brought the fact 
 home to her. Miss Mullen, au fond, was probably no less 
 vulgar than they, but she was never dull, and Lady Dysart 
 would suffer anything rather than dulness. It was less than 
 nothing to her that Charlotte's mother was reported to have 
 been in her youth a national schoolmistress, and her grand- 
 mother a bare-footed country girl. These facts of Miss 
 Mullen's pedigree were valued topics in Lismoyle, but Lady 
 Dysart's serene radicalism ignored the inequalities of a lower 
 class, and she welcomed a woman who could talk to her on 
 spiritualism, or books, or indeed on any current topic, with a 
 point and agreeability that made her accent, to English ears, 
 merely the expression of a vigorous individuality. She now 
 laughed in response to her visitor's jest, but her eye did not 
 cease from roving over the gathering, and her broad brow 
 was still contracted in calculation. 
 
 " I never knew the country so bereft of men or so peopled 
 with girls ! Even the little Barrington boys are- off with the 
 militia, and everyone about has conspired to fill their houses 
 with women, and not only women but dummies ! " Her 
 glance lighted on the long bench where sat the more honour- 
 able women in midge-bitten dulness. " And there is Kate 
 Gascogne in one of her reveries, not hearing a word that 
 Mrs. Waller is saying to her " 
 
 With Lady Dysart intention was accomplishment as nearly 
 as might be. She had scarcely finished speaking before she 
 began a headlong advance upon the objects of her diatribe, 
 making a short cut across the corner of a lawn-tennis court, 
 and scarcely observing the havoc that her transit wrought in 
 
14 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 the game. Charlotte was less rash. She steered her course 
 clear of the tennis grounds, and of the bench of matrons, 
 passed the six Miss Beatties with a comprehensive " How 
 are ye, girls ? " and took up her position under one of the 
 tall elm trees. 
 
 Under the next tree a few men were assembled, herding 
 together for mutual protection after the manner of men, and 
 laying down the law to each other about road sessions, the 
 grand jury, and Irish politics generally. They were a fairly 
 representative trio ; a country gentleman with a grey mous- 
 tache and a loud voice in which he was announcing that 
 nothing would give him greater pleasure than to pull the 
 rope at the execution of a certain English statesman ; a 
 slight, dejected-looking clergyman, who vied with Major 
 Waller in his denunciations, but chastenedly, like an echo 
 in a cathedral aisle ; and a smartly dressed man of about 
 thirty-five, of whom a more detailed description need not be 
 given, as he has been met with in the first chapter, and 
 the six years after nine-and-twenty do little more than 
 mellow a man's taste in checks, and sprinkle a grey hair or 
 two on his temples. 
 
 Miss Mullen listened for a few minutes to the melancholy 
 pessimisms of the archdeacon, and then, interrupting Major 
 Waller in a fine outburst on the advisability of martial law, 
 she thrust herself and her attendant cloud of midges into 
 the charmed circle of the smoke of Mr. Lambert's cigar- 
 ette. 
 
 "Ho ! do I hear me old friend the Major at politics?" 
 she said, shaking hands effusively with the three men. " I 
 declare I'm a better politician than any one of you ! D'ye 
 know how I served Tom Casey, the land-leaguing plumber, 
 yesterday ? I had him mending my tank, and when I got 
 him into it I whipped the ladder away, and told him not 
 a step should he budge till he sang ' God save the Queen ! ' 
 I was arguing there half an hour with him in water up to 
 his middle before I converted him, and then it wasn't so 
 much the warmth of his convictions as the cold of his legs 
 made him tune up. I call that practical politics ! " 
 
 The speed and vigour with which this story was told 
 would have astounded anyone who did not know Miss 
 Mullen's powers of narration, but Mr. Lambert, to whom it 
 
The Real Charlotte. 15 
 
 seemed specially addressed, merely took his cigarette out of 
 his mouth, and said, with a familiar laugh : 
 
 " Practical politics, by Jove ! I call it a cold water cure. 
 Kill or cure like the rest of your doctoring, eh ! Char 
 lotte?" 
 
 Miss Mullen joined with entire good-humour in the laugh 
 that followed. 
 
 " Oh, th' ingratitude of man ! " she exclaimed. " Arch- 
 deacon, you've seen his bald scalp from the pulpit, and I 
 ask you, now, isn't that a fresh crop he has on it ? I leave 
 it to his conscience, if he has one, to say if it wasn't 
 my doctoring gave him that fine black thatch he has 
 now ! " 
 
 The archdeacon fixed his eyes seriously upon her ; Char- 
 lotte's playfulness always alarmed and confused him. 
 
 "Do not appeal to me, Miss Mullen," he answered, in 
 his refined, desponding voice; "my unfortunate sight 
 makes my evidence in such a matter worth nothing ; and, 
 by the way, I meant to ask you if your niece would be good 
 enough to help us in the choir? I understand she sings." 
 
 Charlotte interrupted him. 
 
 " There's another of you at it ! " she exclaimed. " I 
 think I'll have to adzwtiss in the Irish Times that, whereas 
 my first cousin, Isabella Mullen, married Johnny Fitz- 
 patrick, who was no relation of mine, good, bad, or indiffer- 
 ent, their child is my first cousin once removed, and not 
 my niece ! " 
 
 Mr. Lambert blew a cloud of smoke through his nose. 
 
 "You're a nailer at pedigrees, Charlotte," he said with 
 a patronage that he knew was provoking ; " but as far as 
 I can make out the position, it comes to mighty near the 
 same thing ; you're what they call her Welsh aunt, any- 
 how." 
 
 Charlotte's face reddened, and she opened her wide 
 mouth for a retort, but before she had time for more than 
 the champings as of a horse with a heavy bit, which pre- 
 ceded her more incisive repartees, another person joined 
 the group. 
 
 " Mr. Lambert," said Pamela Dysart, in her pleasant, 
 anxious voice, " I am going to ask you if you will play in 
 the next set, or if you would rather help the Miss Beatties 
 
16 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 to get up a round of golf? How do you do, Miss Mullen ? 
 I have not seen you before ; wby did you not bring your 
 niece with you ? " 
 
 Charlotte showed all her teeth in a forced smile as she 
 replied, "I suppose you mean my cousin, Miss Dysart 
 she won't be with me till the day after to-morrow." 
 
 " Oh, I'm so sorry," replied Pamela, with the sympathetic 
 politeness that made strangers think her manner too good 
 to be true ; " and Mr. Lambert tells me she plays tennis 
 so well." 
 
 " Why, what does he know about her tennis playing ? " 
 said Charlotte, turning sharply towards Lambert. 
 
 The set on the nearer court was over, and the two young 
 men who had played in it strolled up to the group as she 
 spoke. Mr. Lambert expanded his broad chest, gave his 
 hat an extra tilt over his nose, and looked rather more self- 
 complacent than usual as he replied : 
 
 " Well, I ought to know something about it, seeing I took 
 her in hand when she was in short petticoats taught her 
 her paces myself, in fact." 
 
 Mr. Hawkins, the shorter of the two players who had 
 just come up, ceased from mopping his scarlet face, ana 
 glanced from Mr. Lambert to Pamela with a countenance 
 devoid of expression, save that conferred by the elevation 
 of one eyebrow almost to the roots of his yellow hair, 
 Pamela's eyes remained unresponsive, but the precipitancy 
 with which she again addressed herself to Mr. Lambert 
 showed that a disposition to laugh had been near. 
 
 Charlotte turned away with an expression that was the 
 reverse of attractive. When her servants saw that look 
 they abandoned excuse or discussion ; when the Lismoyle 
 beggars saw it they checked the flow of benediction and fled 
 Even the archdeacon, through the religious halo that habitu- 
 ally intervened between him and society, became aware that 
 the moment was not propitious for speaking to Miss Mullen 
 about his proposed changes in the choir, and he drifted 
 away to think of diocesan matters, and to forget as far as 
 possible that he was at a lawn-tennis party. 
 
 Outside the group stood the young man who had been 
 playing in the set with Mr. Hawkins. He was watching 
 through an eyeglass the limp progress of the game in the 
 
The Real Charlotte. I? 
 
 other court, and was even making praiseworthy attempts to 
 applaud the very feeble efforts of the players. He was tall 
 and slight, with a near-sighted stoop, and something of an 
 old-fashioned, eighteenth century look about him that was 
 accentuated by his not wearing a moustache, and was out of 
 keeping with the flannels and brilliant blazer that are the 
 revolutionary protest of this age against its orthodox clothing. 
 It did not seem to occur to him that he was doing anything 
 unusual in occupying himself, as he was now doing, in pick- 
 ing up balls for the Lismoyle curate and his partner ; he 
 would have thought it much more remarkable had he found 
 in himself a preference for doing anything else. This was 
 an occupation that demanded neither interest nor conversa- 
 tion, and of a number of disagreeable duties he did not 
 think that he had chosen the worst. 
 
 Charlotte walked up to him as he stood leaning against a 
 tree, and held out her hand. 
 
 "How d'ye do, Mr. Dysart?" she said with marked 
 politeness. All trace of combat had left her manner, and 
 the smile with which she greeted him was sweet and capaci- 
 ous. " We haven't seen you in Lismoyle since you came 
 back from the West Indies." 
 
 Christopher Dysart let his eyeglass fall, and looked 
 apologetic as he enclosed her well-filled glove in his long 
 hand, and made what excuses he could for not having called 
 upon Miss Mullen. 
 
 " Since Captain Thesiger has got this new steam-launch I 
 can't call my soul my own ; I'm out on the lake with him 
 half the day, and the other half I spend with a nail-brush 
 trying to get the blacks off." 
 
 He spoke with a hesitation that could hardly be called a 
 stammer, but was rather a delaying before his sentences, a 
 mental rather than a physical uncertainty. 
 
 "Oh, that's a very poor excuse," said Charlotte with loud 
 affability, " deserting your old friends for the blacks a second 
 time ! I thought you had enough of them in the last two 
 years ! And you know you promised or your good mother 
 did for you that you'd come and photograph poor old Mrs. 
 Tommy before she died. The poor thing's so sick now we 
 have to feed her with a baby's bottle." 
 
 Christopher wondered if Mrs. Tommy were the cook, and 
 
1 8 The Real CJiarlotte. 
 
 was on the point of asking for further particulars, when Miss 
 Mullen continued : 
 
 " She's the great-great-grandmother of all me cats, and T 
 want you to immortalise her; but don't come till after 
 Monday, as I'd like to introduce you to my cousin, Miss 
 Fitzpatrick ; did you hear she was coming ?" 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Lambert told us she was to be here next week/ 5 
 said Christopher, with an indescribable expression that was 
 not quite amusement, but was something more than in- 
 telligence. 
 
 "What did he say of her?" 
 
 Christopher hesitated ; somehow what he remembered of 
 Mr. Lambert's conversation was of too free and easy a 
 nature for repetition to Miss Fitzpatrick's cousin. 
 
 "He er seemed to think her very er charming in 
 all ways," he said rather lamely. 
 
 " So it's talking of charming young ladies you and Roddy 
 Lambert are when he comes to see you on estate business ! " 
 said Charlotte archly, but with a rasp in her voice. " When 
 my poor father was your father's agent, and I used to be 
 helping him in the office, it was charming young cattle we 
 talked about, and not young ladies." 
 
 Christopher laughed in a helpless way. 
 
 " I wish you were at the office still, Miss Mullen ; if any- 
 one could understand the Land Act I believe it would be 
 you." 
 
 At this moment there was an upheaval among the matrons ; 
 the long line rose and broke, and made for the grey stone 
 house whose windows were flashing back the sunlight 
 through the trees at the end of the lawn-tennis grounds. The 
 tedious skirmish with midges, and the strain of inactivity, 
 were alike over for the^present, and the conscience of the 
 son of the house reminded him that he ought to take Miss 
 Mullen in to tea. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THERE was consternation among the cats at Tally Ho 
 Lodge; a consternation mingled with righteous resentment. 
 Even the patriarchal Susan could scarcely remember the 
 
The Real Charlotte. 19 
 
 time that the spare bedroom had been anything else than an 
 hospital, a nursery, and a secure parliament house for him 
 and his descendants ; yet now, in his old age, and when he 
 had, after vast consideration of alternatives, allocated to 
 himself the lowest shelf of the wardrobe as a sleeping place, 
 he was evicted at a moment's notice, and the folded-away 
 bed curtains that had formed his couch were even now per- 
 fuming the ambient air as they hung out of the window over 
 the hall door. Susan was too dignified to give utterance to 
 his wounded feelings ; he went away by himself, and sitting 
 on the roof of the fowl-house, thought unutterable things 
 But his great-niece, Mrs. BrurT, could not emulate his 
 stoicism. Followed by her five latest kittens, she strode 
 through the house, uttering harsh cries of rage and despair, 
 and did not cease from her lamentations until Charlotte 
 brought the whole party into the drawing-room, and estab- 
 lished them in the waste-paper basket. 
 
 The worst part about the upheaval, as even the youngest 
 and least experienced of the cats could see, was that it was 
 irrevocable. It was early morning when the first dull blow 
 of Norry's broom against the wainscot had startled them 
 with new and strange apprehension, and incredulity had 
 grown to certainty, till the final moment when the sight of a 
 brimming pail of water urged them to panic-struck flight. 
 It may be admitted that Norry the Boat, who had not, as a 
 rule, any special taste for cleanliness, had seldom enjoyed 
 anything more than this day of turmoil, this routing of her 
 ancient enemies. Miss Charlotte, to whom on ordinary 
 occasions the offended cat never appealed in vain, was now 
 bound by her own word. She had given orders that the 
 spare room was to be " cleaned down," and cleaned down 
 it surely should be. It was not, strictly speaking, Norry's 
 work. Louisa was house and parlour-maid ; Louisa, a 
 small and sullen Protestant orphan of unequalled sluggish- 
 ness and stupidity, for whose capacity for dealing with any 
 emergency Norry had a scorn too deep for any words that 
 might conveniently be repeated here. It was not likely 
 that Louisa would be permitted to join in the ardours of the 
 campaign, when even Bid Sal, Norry's own special kitchen- 
 slut and co-religionist, was not allowed to assist. 
 
 Norry the Boat, daughter of Shaunapickeen, the ferryman 
 
20 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 (whence her title), and of Carroty Peg, his wife, was a per- 
 son with whom few would have cared to co-operate against 
 her will. On this morning she wore a more ferocious aspect 
 than usual. Her roughly-waving hair, which had never 
 known the dignity of a cap, was bound up in a blue duster, 
 leaving her bony forehead bare ; dust and turf-ashes hung 
 in her grizzled eyebrows, her arms were smeared with black- 
 lead, and the skirt of her dress was girt about her waist, 
 displaying a petticoat of heavy Galway flannel, long thin 
 legs, and enormous feet cased in countrymen's laced boots. 
 It was fifteen years now, Norry reflected, while she scrubbed 
 the floor and scraped the candle drippings off it with her 
 nails, since Miss Charlotte and the cats had come into the 
 house, and since then the spare room had never had a 
 visitor in it. Nobody had stayed in the house in all those 
 years except little Miss Francie, and for her the cot had 
 been made up in her great-aunt's room ; the old high-sided 
 cot in which her grandmother had slept when she was a 
 child. The cot had long since migrated into the spare 
 room, and from it Norry had just ejected the household 
 effects of Mrs. Bruff and her family, with a pleasure that 
 was mitigated only by the thought that Miss Francie was a 
 young woman now, and would be likely to give a good deal 
 more trouble in the house than even in the days when she 
 stole the cockatoo's sopped toast for her private consump- 
 tion, and christened the tom-cat Susan against everyone's 
 wishes except her great-aunt's. 
 
 Norry and the cockatoo were now the only survivors of 
 the old regime at Tally Ho Lodge, in fact the cockatoo was 
 regarded in Lismoyle as an almost prehistoric relic, dating, 
 at the lowest computation, from the days when old Mrs. 
 Mullen's fox-hunting father had lived there, and given the 
 place the name that was so remarkably unsuited to its sub- 
 sequent career. The cockatoo was a sprightly creature of 
 some twenty shrieking summers on the day that the two 
 Miss Butlers, clad in high-waisted, low-necked gowns, were 
 armed past his perch in the hall by their father, and before, 
 as it seemed to the cockatoo, he had more than half-finished 
 his morning doze, they were back again, this time on the 
 arms of the two young men who, during the previous five 
 months, had done so much to spoil his digestion by pro- 
 
The Real Charlotte. 21 
 
 pitiatory dainties at improper hours. The cockatoo had no 
 very clear recollection of the subsequent departure of Dr. 
 Mullen and his brother, the attorney, with their brides, on 
 their respective honeymoons, owing to the fact that Mr. 
 Mullen, the agent, brother of the two bridegrooms, had 
 prised open his beak, and compelled him to drink the 
 healths of the happy couples in the strongest and sweetest 
 whisky punch. 
 
 The cockatoo's memory after this climax was filled with 
 vague comings and goings, extending over unknown tracts 
 of time. He remembered two days of disturbance, on each 
 of which a long box had been carried out of the house by 
 several men, and a crowd of people, dressed in black, had 
 eaten a long and clattering meal in the dining-room. He 
 had always remembered the second of these occasions with 
 just annoyance, because, in manoeuvring the long box 
 through the narrow hall, he had been knocked off his perch, 
 and never after that day had the person whom he had been 
 taught to call " Doctor " come to give him his daily lump of 
 sugar. 
 
 But the day that enunciated itself most stridently from 
 the cockatoo's past life was that on which the doctor's niece 
 had, after many short visits, finally arrived with several 
 trunks, and a wooden case from which, when opened, 
 sprang four of the noisome creatures whom Miss Charlotte, 
 their owner, had taught him to call " pussies." A long era 
 of persecution then began for him, of robbery of his food, 
 and even attacks upon his person. He had retaliated by 
 untiring mimicry, by delusive invitations to food in the 
 manner of Miss Charlotte, and lastly, by the strangling of a 
 too-confiding kitten, whom he had lured, with maternal 
 mewings, within reach of his claws. That very day Miss 
 Charlotte's hand avenged the murder, and afterwards con- 
 veyed him, a stiff guilty lump of white feathers, to the top of 
 the kitchen press, from thenceforth never to descend, except 
 when long and patient picking had opened a link of his 
 chain, or when, on fine days, Norry fastened him to a 
 branch of the tall laurel that overhung the pig-stye. Norry 
 was his only friend, a friendship slowly cemented by a com- 
 mon hatred of the cats and Louisa ; indeed, it is probable 
 that but for occasional conversation with Norry he would 
 
22 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 have choked from his own misanthropic fury, helpless, 
 lonely spectator as he was of the secret gluttonies of Louisa, 
 and the maddening domestic felicity of the cats. 
 
 But on this last day of turbulence and rout he had been 
 forgotten. The kitchen was sunny and stuffy, the blue- 
 bottles were buzzing their loudest in the cobwebby window, 
 one colony of evicted kittens was already beginning to make 
 the best of things in the turf heap, and the leaves of the 
 laurel outside were gleaming tropically against the brilliant 
 sky, with no one to appreciate them except the pigs. When 
 it came to half-past twelve o'clock the cockatoo could no 
 longer refrain, and fell to loud and prolonged screamings. 
 The only result at first was a brief stupefaction on the part 
 of the kittens, and an answering outcry from the fowl in the 
 yard ; then, after some minutes, the green baize cross-door 
 opened, and a voice bellowed down the passage : 
 
 "Biddy! Bid Sal!" (fortissimo), "can't ye stop that bird's 
 infernal screeching ? " There was dead silence, and Miss 
 Mullen advanced into the kitchen and called again. 
 
 " Biddy's claning herself, Miss Mullen," said a small voice 
 from the pantry door. 
 
 " That's no reason you shouldn't answer ! " thundered 
 Charlotte ; ' ' come out here yourself and put the cockatoo 
 out in the yard." 
 
 Louisa the orphan, a short, fat, white-faced girl of four- 
 teen, shuffled out of the pantry with her chin buried in her 
 hest, and her round terrified eyes turned upwards to Miss 
 Charlotte's face. 
 
 " I'd be in dhread to ketch him," she faltered. 
 
 Those ladies who considered" Miss Mullen "eccentric, 
 but so kind-hearted, and so clever and agreeable," would 
 have been considerably surprised if they had heard the terms 
 in which she informed Louisa that she was wanting in 
 courage and intelligence ; but Louisa's face expressed no 
 surprise, only a vacancy that in some degree justified her 
 mistress's language. Still denouncing her retainers, Miss 
 Charlotte mounted nimbly upon a chair, and seizing the 
 now speechless cockatoo by the wings, carried him herself 
 out to the yard and fastened him to his accustomed laurel 
 bough. 
 
 She did not go back to the kitchen, but, after a searching 
 
The Real Charlotte. 23 
 
 glance at the contents of the pigs' trough, went out of the 
 yard by the gate that led to the front of the house. 
 Rhododendrons and laurels made a dark green tunnel about 
 her, and, though it was June, the beech leaves of last 
 November lay rotting on each side of the walk. Opposite 
 the hall door the ground rose in a slight slope, thickly 
 covered with evergreens, and topped by a lime tree, on 
 whose lower limbs a flock of black turkeys had ranged 
 themselves in sepulchral meditation. The house itself was 
 half stifled with ivy, monthly roses, and Virginian creeper ; 
 everywhere was the same unkempt profusion of green things, 
 that sucked the sunshine into themselves, and left the air 
 damp and shadowed. Charlotte had the air of thinking 
 very deeply as she walked slowly along with her hands in 
 the pockets of her black alpaca apron. The wrinkles on 
 her forehead almost touched the hair that grew so low down 
 upon it as to seem like a wig that had been pulled too far 
 over the turn of the brow, and she kept chewing at her 
 heavy underlip as was her habit during the processes of un- 
 observed thought. Then she went into the house, and, 
 sitting down at the davenport in the dining-room, got out a 
 sheet of her best notepaper, and wrote a note to Pamela 
 Dysart in her strong, commercially clear hand. 
 
 Afternoon tea had never flourished as an institution at 
 Tally Ho Lodge. Occasionally, and of necessity, a laboured 
 repast had been served at five o'clock by the trembling 
 Louisa; occasions on which the afternoon caller had not 
 only to suffer the spectacle of a household being shaken to 
 its foundations on her behalf, but had subsequently to eat 
 of the untempting fruit of these struggles. On the after- 
 noon, however, of the day following that of the cleansing of 
 the spare room, timely preparations had been made. Half 
 the round table in the centre of the drawing-room had been 
 covered with a cloth, and on it Louisa, in the plenitude of 
 her zeal, had prepared a miniature breakfast ; loaf, butter- 
 cooler, and knives and forks, a truly realistic touch being 
 conferred by two egg-cups standing in the slop-basin. A 
 vase of marigolds and pink sweet-pea stood behind these, a 
 fresh heap of shavings adorned the grate, the piano had been 
 opened and dusted, and a copy of the " Indiana Waltzes v 
 frisked on the desk in the breeze from the open window. 
 
24 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 Charlotte sat in a low armchair and surveyed her drawing- 
 room with a good deal of satisfaction. .Her fingers moved 
 gently through the long fur at the back of Mrs. Bruff's 
 head, administering, almost unconsciously, the most deli- 
 cately satisfactory scratching about the base of the wide, 
 sensitive ears, while her eyes wandered back to the pages of 
 the novel that lay open on her lap. She was a great and 
 insatiable reader, surprisingly well acquainted with the 
 classics of literature, and unexpectedly lavish in the purchase 
 of books. Her neighbours never forgot to mention, in 
 describing her, the awe-inspiring fact that she " took in the 
 English Times and the Saturday Review, and read every 
 word of them," but it was hinted that the bookshelves that 
 her own capable hands had put up in her bedroom held a 
 large proportion of works of fiction of a startlingly advanced 
 kind, " and," it was generally added in tones of mystery, 
 " many of them French." 
 
 It was half-past five o'clock, and the sharpest of several 
 showers that had fallen that day had caused Miss Mullen 
 to get up and shut the window, when the grinding of the 
 gate upon the gravel at the end of the short drive warned 
 her that the expected guest was arriving. As she got to 
 the hall door one of those black leather band-boxes on wheels, 
 known in the south and west of Ireland as "jingles " or inr 
 side cars, came brushing under the arch of wet evergreens, 
 and she ran out on to the steps. 
 
 "Well, my dear child, welcome to Tally Ho ! " she began 
 in tones of effusive welcome, as the car turned and backed 
 towards the doorstep in the accustomed way, then seeing 
 through the half-closed curtains that there was nothing inside 
 it except a trunk and a bonnet box, "Where in the name of 
 goodness is the young lady, Jerry ? Didn't you meet her 
 at the train ? " 
 
 " I did to be sure," replied Jerry ; " sure she's afther me 
 on the road now. Mr. Lambert came down on the thrain 
 with her, and he's dhrivin' her here in his own thrap." 
 
 While he was speaking there was the sound of quick trot- 
 ting on the road, and Miss Mullen saw a white straw hat and 
 a brown billycock moving swiftly along over the tops of the 
 evergreens. A dog-cart with a white-faced chestnut swung 
 HJ at the gate, and Miss Fitzpatdck's hat was immediately 
 
The Real Charlotte. 2$ 
 
 swept off her head by a bough of laburnum. Its owner gave 
 a shrill cry and made a snatch at the reins, with an idea 
 apparently of stopping the horse. 
 
 "No, you don't," said Mr. Lambert, intercepting the 
 snatch with his whip hand ; " you're going to be handed 
 over to your aunt just as you are." 
 
 Half a dozen steps brought them to the door, and the 
 chestnut pulled up with his pink nose almost between the 
 curtains of the inside car. It was hard to say whether Miss 
 Mullen had heard Lambert's remark, which had certainly 
 been loud enough to enable her to do so, but her only reply 
 was an attack upon the carman. 
 
 "Take your car out o' that, ye great oaf!" she vociferated , 
 " can't ye make way for your betters ? " Then with a com 
 plete change of voice, " Well, me dear Francie, you're wel- 
 come, you're welcome." 
 
 The greeting was perceptibly less hearty than that which 
 had been squandered on the trunk and bonnet-box ; but an 
 emotion rechauffe necessarily loses flavour. Francie had 
 jumped to the ground with a reckless disregard of the 
 caution demanded by the steps of a dog-cart, and stooping 
 her hatless head, kissed the hard cheek that Charlotte ten- 
 dered for her embrace. 
 
 "Thank you very much, I'm very glad to come," she 
 said, in a voice whose Dublin accent had been but little 
 modified by the six years that had lightly gone over her 
 since the August Sunday when she had fled from Tommy 
 Whitty in the milkman's cart. " And look at me the show 
 I am without my hat ! And it's all his fault ! " with a lift of 
 her blue eyes to Lambert, " he wouldn't let me stop and 
 pick it up." 
 
 Charlotte looked up at her with the wide smile of welcome 
 still stiff upon her face. The rough golden heap of curls on 
 the top of Francie's head was spangled with raindrops and 
 her coat was grey with wet. 
 
 "Well, if Mr. Lambert had had any sense," said Miss 
 Mullen, " he'd have let you come in the covered car. Here, 
 Louisa, go fetch Miss Fitzpatrick's hat." 
 
 " Ah, no, sure she'll get all wet," said Francie, starting 
 herself before the less agile Louisa could emerge from be- 
 hind her mistress, and running down the 4nve. 
 
26 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 " Did you corne down from Dublin to-day, Roddy ? " 
 said Charlotte. 
 
 " Yes, I did," answered Mr. Lambert, turning his horse 
 as he spoke ; " I had business that took me up to town 
 yesterday, so it just happened that I hit off Francie. Well, 
 good evening. I expect Lucy will be calling round to see 
 you to-morrow or next day." 
 
 He walked his horse down the drive, and as he passed 
 Francie returning with her hat he leaned over the wheel 
 and said something to her that made her shake her head 
 and laugh. Miss Charlotte was too far off to hear what it 
 was. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 IT was generally felt in Lismoyle that Mr. Roderick Lam- 
 bert held an unassailable position in society. The Dysart 
 agency had always been considered to confer brevet rank as 
 a country gentleman upon its owner, apart even from the 
 intimacy with the Dysarts which it implied; and as, in 
 addition to these advantages, Mr. Lambert possessed good 
 looks, a wife with money, and a new house at least a mile 
 from the town, built under his own directions and at bis 
 employer's expense, Lismoyle placed him unhesitatingly at 
 the head of its visiting list. Of course his wife was placed 
 there too, but somehow or other Mrs. Lambert was a person 
 of far less consequence than her husband. She had had 
 the money certainly, but that quality was a good deal over- 
 looked by the Lismoyle people in their admiration for the 
 manner in which her husband spent it. It was natural that 
 they should respect the captor rather than the captive, and, 
 in any case, Mr. Roderick Lambert's horses and traps were 
 more impressive facts than the Maltese terrier and the shelf 
 of patent medicines that were Mrs. Lambert's only ex- 
 travagances. 
 
 Possibly, also, the fact that she had no children placed 
 her at a disadvantage with the matrons of Lismoyle, all of 
 whom could have spoken fearlessly with their enemies 
 in the gate; it deprived conversation with her of the 
 antiphonal quality, when mother answers unto mother of 
 
The Real Charlotte. 27 
 
 vaccination and teething-rash and the sins of the nursery- 
 maids are visited upon the company generally. 
 
 " Ah, she's a poor peenie-weenie thing ! " said Mrs. Baker, 
 who was usually the mouthpiece of Lismoyle opinion, " and 
 it's no wonder that Lambert's for ever flourishing about the 
 country in his dog-trap, and she never seeing a sight of him 
 from morning till night. I'd like to see Mr. Baker getting 
 up on a horse and galloping around the roads after bank 
 hours, instead of coming in for his cup of tea with me and 
 the girls ! " 
 
 Altogether the feeling was that Mrs. Lambert was a 
 failure, and in spite of her undoubted amiability, and the 
 creditable fact that Mr. Lambert was the second husband 
 that the eight thousand pounds ground out by her late 
 father's mills had procured for her, her spouse was regarded 
 with a certain regretful pity as the victim of circumstance. 
 
 In spite of his claims upon the sympathy of Lismoyle, 
 Mr. Lambert looked remarkably well able to compete with 
 his lot in life, as he sat smoking his pipe in his dinner cos- 
 tume of carpet slippers and oldest shooting coat, a couple of 
 evenings after Francie's arrival. As a rule the Lamberts 
 preferred to sit in their dining-room. The hard magni- 
 ficence of the blue rep chairs in the drawing-room appealed 
 to them from different points of view ; Mrs. Lambert hold- 
 ing that they were too good to be used except by "com- 
 pany," while Mr. Lambert truly felt that no one who was 
 not debarred by politeness from the power of complaint 
 would voluntarily sit upon them. An unshaded lamp was 
 on the table, its ugly glare conflicting with the soft remnants 
 of June twilight that stole in between the half- drawn cur- 
 tains ; a tumbler of whisky and water stood on the corner 
 of the table beside the comfortable" leather-covered arm- 
 chair in which the master of the house was reading his 
 paper, while opposite to him, in a basket chair, his wife was 
 conscientiously doing her fancy work. She was a short 
 woman with confused brown eyes and distressingly sloping 
 shoulders ; a woman of the turkey hen type, dejected and 
 timorous in voice, and an habitual wearer of porous plasters. 
 Her toilet for the evening consisted in replacing by a white 
 cashmere shawl the red knitted one which she habitually 
 wore, and a languid untidiness in the pale brown hair that 
 
28 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 hung over her eyes intimated that she had tried to curl her 
 fringe for dinner. 
 
 Neither were speaking ; it seemed as if Mr Lambert were 
 placidly awaiting the arrival of his usual after-dinner sleep ; 
 the Maltese terrier was already snoring plethorically on his 
 mistress's lap, in a manner quite disproportioned to his size, 
 and Mrs. Lambert's crochet needles were moving more and 
 more slowly through the mazes of the " bosom friend " that 
 she was making for herself, the knowledge that the minute 
 hand of the black marble clock was approaching the hour 
 at which she took her postprandial pill alone keeping her 
 from also yielding to the soft influences of a substantial 
 meal. At length she took the box from the little table be- 
 side her, where it stood between a bottle of smelling-salts 
 and a lump of camphor, and having sat with it in her hand 
 till the half hour was solemnly boomed from the chimney- 
 piece, swallowed her pill with practised ease. At the slight 
 noise of replacing the box, her husband opened his eyes. 
 
 " By the way, Lucy," he said in a voice that had no trace 
 of drowsiness in it, " did Charlotte Mullen say what she was 
 going to do to-morrow ? " 
 
 "Oh, yes, Roderick," replied Mrs. Lambert a little 
 anxiously, "indeed, I was wanting to tell you Charlotte 
 asked me if I could drive her over to Mrs. Waller's to- 
 morrow afternoon. I forgot to ask you before if you wanted 
 the horses." 
 
 Mr. Lambert's fine complexion deepened by one or two 
 shades. 
 
 " Upon my soul, Charlotte Mullen has a good cheek ! 
 She gets as much work out of my horses as I do myself. I 
 suppose you told her you'd do it ? " 
 
 " Well, what else could I do ? " replied Mrs. Lambert 
 with tremulous crossness ; " I'm sure it's not once in the 
 month I get outside the place, and, as for Charlotte, she has 
 not been to the Waller's since before Christmas, and you 
 know very well old Captain couldn't draw her eight miles 
 there and eight miles back any more than the cat." 
 
 " Cat be hanged ! Why the devil can't she put her hand 
 in her pocket and take a car for herself ? " said Lambert, 
 uncrossing his legs and sitting up straight ; " I suppose I'll 
 hear next that I'm not to order out my own horses till I've 
 
The Real Charlotte. 29 
 
 sent round to Miss Mullen to know if she wants them first ! 
 If you weren't so infernally under her thumb you'd remember 
 there were others to be consulted besides her." 
 
 " I'm not under her thumb, Roderick ; I beg you'll not 
 say such a thing," replied Mrs. Lambert huffily, her eyes 
 blinking with resentment. " Charlotte Mullen's an old 
 friend of mine, and yours too, and it's a hard thing I can't 
 take her out driving without remarks being passed, and I 
 never thought you'd want the horses. I thought you said 
 you'd be in the office all to-morrow," ended the poor turkey 
 hen, whose feathers were constitutionally incapable of re- 
 maining erect for any length of time. 
 
 Lambert did not answer immediately. His eyes rested 
 on her flushed face with just enough expression in them to 
 convey to her that her protest was beside the point. Mrs. 
 Lambert was apparently used to this silent comment on 
 what she said, for she went on still more apologetically : 
 
 "If you like, Roderick, I'll send Michael over earlj 
 with a note to Charlotte to tell her we'll go some othei 
 day." 
 
 Mr. Lambert leaned back as if to consider the question, 
 and began to fill his pipe for the second time. 
 
 " Well," he said slowly, " if it makes no difference to you, 
 Lucy, I'd be rather glad if you did. As a matter of fact I 
 have to ride out to Gurthnamuckla to-morrow, on business, 
 and I thought I'd take Francie Fitzpatrick with me there on 
 the black mare. She's no great shakes of a rider, and the 
 black mare is the only thing I'd like to put her on. But, 
 of course, if it was for your own sake and not Charlotte's 
 that you wanted to go to the Waller's, I'd try and manage 
 to take Francie some other day. For the matter of that I 
 might put her on Paddy ; I daresay he'd carry a lady." 
 
 Mr. Lambert's concession had precisely the expected 
 effect. Mrs. Lambert gave a cry of consternation : 
 
 " Roderick ! you wouldn't ! Is it put that girl up on 
 that mad little savage of a pony ! Why, it's only yesterday, 
 when Michael was driving me into town, and Mr. Corkran 
 passed on his tricycle, he tore up on to his hind heels and 
 tried to run into Ryan's public-house ! Indeed, if that was 
 the way, not all the Charlottes in the world would make me 
 go driving to-morrow." 
 
3O The Real Charlotte. 
 
 " Oh, all right," said Lambert graciously ; " if you'd rather 
 have it that way, we'll send a note over to Charlotte," 
 
 " Would you mind" said Mrs. Lambert hesitatingly. 
 " I mean, don't you think it would be better if supposing 
 you wrote the note ? She always minds what you say, and, 
 I declare, I don't know how in the world I'd make up the 
 excuse, when she'd settled the whole thing, and even got 
 me to leave word with the sweep to do her drawing-room 
 chimney that's thick with jackdaws' nests, because the 
 family'd be from home all the afternoon." 
 
 " Why, what was to happen to Francie ? " asked Lambert 
 quickly. 
 
 " I think Charlotte said she was to come with us," yawned 
 Mrs. Lambert, whose memory for conversation was as feeble 
 as the part she played in it ; u they had some talk about it, 
 at all events. I wouldn't be sure but Francie Fitzpatrick 
 said first she'd go for a walk to see the town yes, so she 
 did, and Charlotte told her what she was going for was to 
 try and see the officers, and Francie said maybe it was, or 
 maybe she'd come and have afternoon tea with you. They 
 had great joking about it, but I'm sure, after all, it was 
 settled she was to come with us. Indeed," continued Mrs. 
 Lambert meditatively, " I think Charlotte's quite right not 
 to have her going through the town that way by herself; for, 
 I declare, Roderick, that's a lovely girl." 
 
 " Oh, she's well able to take care of herself," said Lambert, 
 with the gruff deprecation that is with some people the 
 method of showing pleasure at a compliment. " She's not 
 such a fool as she looks, I can tell you," he went on, feeling 
 suddenly quite companionable; "the Fitzpatricks didn't 
 take such wonderful care of her that Charlotte need be 
 bothering herself to put her in cotton wool at this time of 
 day." 
 
 Mrs. Lambert crocheted on in silence for a few moments, 
 inwardly counting her stitches till she came to the end of 
 the row, then she withdrew the needle and scratched her 
 head ruminatingly with it. 
 
 " Isn't it a strange thing, Roderick, what makes Charlotte 
 have anyone staying in the house with her ? I never re- 
 member such a thing to happen before." 
 
 " She has to have her, and no thanks to her. Old Fitz- 
 
The Real Charlotte, 31 
 
 Patrick's been doing bad business lately, and the little house 
 he's had to take at Bray is a tight fit for themselves and the 
 children ; so, as he said to me, he thought it was time for 
 Charlotte to do something for her own cousin's child and 
 no such great thanks to her either, seeing she got every 
 halfpenny the old woman had." 
 
 Mrs. Lambert realised that she was actually carrying on 
 a conversation with her husband, and nervously cast about 
 in her mind for some response that should be both striking 
 and stimulating. 
 
 " Well, now, if you want my opinion," she said, shutting 
 both her eyes and shaking her hec.d with the peculiar arch 
 sagacity of a dull woman, " I wouldn't be surprised if 
 Charlotte wasn't so sorry to have her here after all. Maybe 
 she thinks she might snap up one of the officers or there's 
 young Charley Flood or, Roderick ! " Mrs. Lambert almost 
 giggled with delight and excitement "I wouldn't put it 
 past Charlotte to be trying to ketch Mr. Dysart." 
 
 Roderick laughed in a disagreeable way. 
 
 " I'd wish her joy of him if she got him ! A fellow that'd 
 rather stick at home there at Bruff having tea with his sister 
 than go down like any other fellow and play a game of pool 
 at the hotel ! A sort of chap that says, if you offer him a 
 whisky and soda in a friendly way, ' Th thanks I don't 
 c care about anything at this t t time of day.' I think 
 Francie'd make him sit up ! " Mr. Lambert felt his imita- 
 tion of Christopher Dysart's voice to be a success, and the 
 shrill burst of laughter with which Mrs. Lambert greeted it 
 gave him for the moment an unusual tinge of respect for 
 her intelligence. "That's about the size of it, Lucy 
 what ? " 
 
 " Oh, Roderick, how comical you are ! " responded the 
 dutiful turkey hen, wiping her watery eyes; "it reminds me 
 of the days when you used to be talking of old Mr. Mullen 
 and Charlotte fighting in the office till I'd think I was 
 listening to themselves." 
 
 " God help the man that's got to fight with Charlotte, 
 anyhow ! " said Lambert, finishing his whisky and water as 
 if toasting the sentiment ; " and talking of Charlotte, Lucy, 
 you needn't mind about writing that note to her j I'll go 
 over myself and speak to her in the morning." 
 
32 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 " Oh, yes, Roderick, 'twill be all right if you see herself, 
 and you might say to her that I'll be expecting her to come 
 in to tea." 
 
 Mr. Lambert, who had already taken up his newspaper 
 again, merely grunted an assent. Mrs. Lambert patiently 
 folded her small bony hands upon her dog's back, and clos- 
 ing her eyes and opening her mouth, fell asleep in half a 
 dozen breaths. 
 
 Her hus-band read his paper for a short time, while the 
 subdued duet of snoring came continuously from the chair 
 opposite. The clock struck nine in its sonorous, gentle- 
 manlike voice, and at the sound Lambert threw down his 
 paper as if an idea had occurred to him. He got up and 
 went over to the window, and putting aside the curtains, 
 looked out into the twilight of the June evening. The 
 world outside was still awake, and the air was tender with 
 the remembrance of the long day of sunshine and heat ; a 
 thrush was singing loudly down by the seringa bush at the 
 end of the garden ; the cattle were browsing and breathing 
 audibly in the field beyond, and some children were laugh- 
 ing and shouting on the road. It seemed to Lambert much 
 earlier than he had thought, and as he stood there, the in< 
 vitation of the summer evening began to appeal to him with 
 seductive force; the quiet fields lay grey and mysterious 
 under the pale western glow, and his eye travelled several 
 times across them to a distant dark blot the clump of 
 trees and evergreens in which Tally Ho Lodge lay buried. 
 
 He turned from the window at last, and coming back 
 into the lamplit room, surveyed it and its unconscious oc- 
 cupants with a feeling of intolerance for their unlovely 
 slumber. His next step was the almost unprecedented one 
 of changing his slippers for boots, and in a few minutes he 
 had left the house. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 NORRY THE BOAT toiled up the back stairs with wrath in 
 her heart. She had been listening for some minutes with 
 grim enjoyment to cries from the landing upstairs; un- 
 availing calls for Louisa, interspersed with the dumb 
 
The Real Charlotte. 33 
 
 galvanic quiver of a bell-less bellwire, and at last Francie's 
 voice at the angle half-way down the kitchen stairs had en- 
 treated her to find and despatch to her the missing Pro- 
 testant orphan. Then Norry had said to herself, while she 
 lifted the pot of potatoes off the fire, " Throuble-the-house ! 
 God knows I'm heart - scalded with the whole o' yees ! " 
 And then aloud, " She's afther goin' out to the dhryin" 
 ground to throw out a few aper'rns to blaych." 
 
 " Well, I must have somebody ; I can't get my habit on," 
 the voice had wailed in reply. " Couldn't you come, 
 Norry ? " 
 
 As we have said, Norry ascended the stairs with wrath in 
 her heart, as gruesome a lady's-maid as could well be im- 
 agined, with an apron mottled with grease spots, and a stale 
 smell of raw onions pervading her generally. Francie was 
 standing in front of the dim looking-glass with which Char- 
 lotte chastened the vanity of her guests, trying with stiff and 
 tired fingers to drag the buttons of a brand new habit 
 through the unyielding buttonholes that tailors alone have 
 the gift of making, and Norry's anger was forgotten in 
 prayerful horror, as her eyes wandered from the hard felt 
 hat to the trousered ankle that appeared beneath the skimpy 
 and angular skirt. 
 
 " The Lord look down in pity on thim that cut that petti- 
 coat ! " she said. " Sure, it's not out in the sthreets ye're 
 goin' in the like o' that ! God knows it'd be as good for 
 ye to be dhressed like a man altogether I " 
 
 " I wouldn't care what I was dressed like if I could only 
 make the beastly thing meet," said Francie, her face flushed 
 with heat and effort ; " wasn't I the fool to tell him to make 
 it tight in the waist ! " 
 
 The subsequent proceedings were strenuous, but in the 
 end successful, and finally Miss Fitzpatrick walked stiffly 
 downstairs, looking very slender and tall, with the tail of the 
 dark green habit she had felt green to be the colour con- 
 secrated to sport drawn tightly round her, and a silver 
 horse-shoe brooch at her throat. 
 
 Charlotte was standing at the open hall door talking to 
 Mr. Lambert. 
 
 " Come along, child," she said genially, " you've been so 
 long adorning yourself that nothing but his natural respect 
 
 C 
 
34 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 for the presence of a lady kept this gentleman from indulg- 
 ing in abusive language." 
 
 Charlotte, in her lighter moods, was addicted to a ponder- 
 ous persiflage, the aristocratic foster-sister of her broader 
 peasant jestings in the manner of those whom she was fond 
 of describing as " the bar purple? 
 
 Mr. Lambert did not trouble himself to reply to this sally. 
 He was looking at the figure in the olive-green habit that 
 was advancing along the path of sunlight to the doorway, 
 and thinking that he had done well to write that letter on 
 the subject of the riding that Francie might expect to have 
 at Lismoyle. Charlotte turned her head also to look at the 
 radiant, sunlit figure. 
 
 " Why, child, were you calling Norry just now to melt 
 you down and pour you into that garment ? I never saw 
 such a waist ! Take care and don't let her fall off, Roddy, 
 or she'll snap in two ! " She laughed loudly and discord- 
 antly, looking to Mr. Lambert's groom for the appreciation 
 that was lacking in the face of his master ; and during the 
 arduous process of getting Miss Fitzpatrick into her saddle 
 she remained on the steps, offering facetious suggestions 
 and warnings, with her short arms akimbo, and a smile that 
 was meant to be jovial accentuating the hard lines of her 
 face. 
 
 At last the green habit was adjusted, the reins placed pro- 
 perly between Francie's awkward fingers, and Mr. Lambert 
 had mounted his long-legged young chestnut and was ready 
 to start. 
 
 " Don't forget Lucy expects you to tea, Charlotte," he 
 said as he settled himself in his saddle. 
 
 " And don't you forget what I told you," replied Char- 
 lotte, sinking her voice confidentially ; " don't mind her if 
 she opens her mouth wide ; it'll take less to shut it than ye'd 
 think." 
 
 Lambert nodded and rode after Francie, who, in compli- 
 ance with the wishes of the black mare, had hurried on to- 
 wards the gate. The black mare was a lady of character, 
 well-mannered but firm, and the mere sit of the saddle on 
 her back told her that this was a case when it would be well 
 to take matters into her own control; she accordingly 
 dragged as much of the reins as she required from Francie's 
 
The Real Charlotte. 35 
 
 helpless hands, and by the time she had got on to the high 
 road, had given her rider to understand that her position was 
 that of tenant at will. 
 
 They turned their backs on the town, and rode along the 
 dazzling, dusty road, that radiated all the heat of a blazing 
 afternoon. 
 
 " I think he did you pretty well with that habit," re- 
 marked Lambert presently. "What's the damage to be? " 
 
 " What do you think ? " replied Francie gaily, answering 
 one question with another after the manner of her country. 
 
 "Ten?" 
 
 " Ah, go on ! Where'd I get ten pounds ? He 'said he'd 
 only charge me six because you recommended me, but I 
 can tell him he'll have to wait for his money." 
 
 " Why, are you hard up again ? " 
 
 Francie looked up at him and laughed with unconcern 
 that was not in the least affected. 
 
 " Of course I am I Did you ever know me that I 
 wasn't?" 
 
 Lambert was silent for a moment or two, and half uncon- 
 sciously his thoughts ran back over the time, six years ago 
 now, when he had first met Francie. There had always 
 been something exasperating to him in her brilliant in- 
 difference to the serious things of life. Her high spirits 
 were as impenetrable as a coat of mail ; her ignorance of the 
 world was at once sublime and enraging. She had not 
 seemed in the least impressed by the fact that he, whom up 
 to this time she had known as merely a visitor at her uncle's 
 house, a feature of the Lawn-Tennis tournament week, and 
 a person with whom to promenade Merrion Square while 
 the band was playing, was in reality a country gentleman, a 
 J.P., and a man of standing, who owned as good horses as 
 anyone in the county. She even seemed as impervious as 
 ever to the pathos of his position in having thrown him- 
 self and his good looks away upon a plain woman six or 
 seven years olde*-*than himself. All these things passed 
 quickly through his mind, as if they found an accustomed 
 groove there, and mingled acidly with the disturbing sub- 
 consciousness that the mare would inevitably come home 
 with a sore back if her rider did not sit straighter than she 
 was doing at present. 
 
36 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 " Look here, Francie," he said at last, with something of 
 asperity, " it's all very fine to humbug now, but if you don't 
 take care you'll find yourself in the county court some fine 
 day. It's easier to get there than you'd think," he added 
 gloomily, " and then there'll be the devil to pay, and 
 nothing to pay him with ; and what'll you do then ? " 
 
 " I'll send for you to come and bail me out ! " replied 
 Francie without hesitation, giving an unconsidered whack 
 behind the saddle as she spoke. The black mare at once 
 showed her sense of the liberty by kicking up her heels in a 
 manner that lifted Francie a hand's-breadth from her seat, 
 and shook her foot out of the stirrup. " Gracious ! " she 
 gasped, when she had sufficiently recovered herself to 
 speak; "what did he do? Did he buck-jump? Oh, Mr. 
 Lambert " as the mare, satisfied with her protest, broke 
 into a sharp trot, " do stop him ; I can't get my foot into the 
 stirrup ! " 
 
 Lambert, trotting serenely beside her on his tall chestnut, 
 watched her precarious bumpings for a minute or two with 
 a grin, then he stretched out a capable hand, and pulled the 
 mare into a walk. 
 
 " Now, where would you be without me ? " he inquired. 
 
 "Sitting on tha road," replied Francie. "I never felt 
 such a horrid rough thing and look at Mrs. Lambert look- 
 ing at me over the wall ! Weren't you a cad that you 
 wouldn't stop him before ? " 
 
 In the matter of exercise, Mrs. Lambert was one of those 
 people who want but little here below, nor want that little 
 long. The tour of the two acres that formed the demesne 
 of Rosemount was generally her limit, and any spare energy 
 that remained to her after that perambulation was spent in 
 taking weeds out of the garden path with a lady-like cane- 
 handled spud. This implement was now in her gauntletted 
 hand, and she waved it feebly to the riders as they passed, 
 while Muffy stood in front of her and barked with asthma- 
 tic fury. 
 
 " Make Miss Fitzpatrick come in to tea on her way home, 
 Roderick," she called, looking admiringly at the girl with 
 kind eyes that held no spark of jealousy of her beauty and 
 youth. Mrs. Lambert was one of the women who sink pre- 
 maturely and unresistingly into the sloughs of middle-age. 
 
The Real Charlotte. 37 
 
 For her there had been no intermediary period of anxious 
 tracking of grey hairs, of fevered energy in the playing of 
 lawn-tennis and rounders ; she had seen, with a feeling too 
 sluggish to be respected as resignation, her complexion 
 ascend the scale of colour from possible pink to the full 
 sunset flush that now burned in her cheeks and spanned the 
 sharp ridge of her nose ; and she still, as she had always 
 done, bought her expensive Sunday bonnet as she would 
 have bought a piece of furniture, because it was handsome, 
 not because it was becoming. The garden hat which she 
 now wore could not pretend to either of these qualifications, 
 and, as Francie looked at her, the contrast between her and 
 her husband was as conspicuous as even he could have 
 wished. 
 
 Francie's first remark, however, after they had passed by, 
 seemed to show that her point of view was not the same as his. 
 
 "Won't she be very lonely there all the afternoon by 
 herself?" she asked, with a backward glance at the figure 
 in the garden hat. 
 
 "Oh, not she!" said Lambert carelessly, "she has the 
 dog, and she'll potter about there as happy as possible. 
 She's all right." Then after a pause in which the drift of 
 Francie's question probably presented itself to him for the 
 first time, " I wish everyone was as satisfied with their life 
 as she is." 
 
 " How bad you are ! " returned Francie, quite unmoved 
 by the gloomy sentimental roll of Mr. Lambert's eyes. " I 
 never heard a man talk such nonsense in my life ! " 
 
 " My dear child," said Lambert, with paternal melancholy, 
 " when you're my age " 
 
 " Which I sha'n't be for the next fifteen years" inter- 
 rupted Francie. 
 
 Mr. Lambert checked himself abruptly, and looked cross. 
 
 " Oh, all right ! If you're going to sit on me every time 
 I open my mouth, I'd better shut up." 
 
 Francie with some difficulty brought the black mare 
 beside the chestnut, and put her hand for an instant on 
 Lambert's arm. 
 
 "Ah now, don't be angry with me!" she said with a 
 glance whose efficacy she had often proved in similar cases ; 
 "you know I was only funning." 
 
38 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 " I am not in the least angry with you," replied Lambert 
 coldly, though his eyes turned in spite of himself to her 
 face. 
 
 " Oh, I know very well you're angry with me," rejoined 
 Francie, with unfeigned enjoyment of the situation ; " your 
 mustash always gets as black as a coal when you're angry." 
 
 The adornment referred to twitched, but its owner said 
 nothing. 
 
 " There now, you're laughing ! " continued Francie, 
 "but it's quite true; I remember the first time I noticed 
 that, was the time you brought Mrs. Lambert up to town 
 about her teeth, and you took places at the Gaiety for the 
 three of us and oh ! do you remember " leaning back 
 and laughing whole-heartedly, " she couldn't get her teeth 
 in in time, and you wanted her to go without any, and she 
 wouldn't, for fear she might laugh at the pantomime, and I 
 had promised to go to the Dalkey Band that night with the 
 Whittles, and then when you got up to our house and found 
 you'd got the three tickets for nothing, you were so mad 
 that when I came down into the parlour I declare I thought 
 you'd been dyeing your mustash ! Aunt Tish said afterwards 
 it was because your face got so white, but / knew it was 
 because you were in such a passion." 
 
 " Well, I didn't like chucking away fifteen shillings a bit 
 more than anyone else would," said Lambert. 
 
 " Ah, well, we made it up, d'ye remember?" said Francie, 
 regarding him with a laughing eye, in which there was a 
 suspicion of sentiment ; " and after all, you were able to 
 change the tickets to another night, and it was ' Pinafore,' 
 and you laughed at me so awfully, because I cried at the 
 part where the two lovers are saying good-bye to each other, 
 and poor Mrs. Lambert got her teeth in in a hurry to go 
 v/ith us, and she couldn't utter the whole night for fear 
 they'd fall out." 
 
 Perhaps the allusions to his wife's false teeth had a subtly 
 soothing effect on Mr. Lambert. He never was averse to 
 anything that showed that other people were as conscious 
 as he was of the disparity between his own admirable per- 
 sonal equipment and that of Mrs. Lambert ; it was another 
 admission of the great fact that he had thrown himself away. 
 His eyebrows and moustache became less truculent, he let 
 
The Real Charlotte. 39 
 
 himself down with a complacent sarcasm on Francie's 
 method of holding her whip, and, as they rode on, he per- 
 mitted to himself the semi-proprietary enjoyment of an 
 agent in pointing out boundaries, and landmarks, and im- 
 provements. 
 
 They had ridden at first under a pale green arch of road- 
 side trees, with fields on either side full of buttercups and 
 dog-daisies, a land of pasture and sleek cattle, and neat 
 stone walls. But in the second or third mile the face of the 
 country changed. The blue lake that had lain in the dis- 
 tance like a long slab of lapis lazuli, was within two fields of 
 them now, moving drowsily in and out of the rocks, and 
 over the coarse gravel of its shore. The trees had dwindled 
 to ragged hazel and thorn bushes ; the fat cows of the com- 
 fortable farms round Lismoyle were replaced by lean, di- 
 shevelled goats, and shelves and flags of grey limestone 
 began to contest the right of the soil with the thin grass and 
 the wiry brushwood. We have said grey limestone, but 
 that hard- worked adjective cannot at all express the cold, 
 pure blueness that these boulders take, under the sky of 
 summer. Some word must yet be coined in which neither 
 blue nor lilac shall have the supremacy, and in which the 
 steely purple of a pigeon's breast shall not be forgotten. 
 
 The rock was everywhere. Even the hazels were at last 
 squeezed out of existence, and inland, over the slowly swell- 
 ing hills, it lay like the pavement of some giant city, that 
 had been jarred from its symmetry by an earthquake. A 
 mile away, on the further side of this iron belt, a clump of 
 trees rose conspicuously by the lake side, round a two- 
 storied white house, and towards these trees the road wound 
 its sinuous way. The grass began to show in larger and 
 larger patches between the rocks, and the indomitable 
 hazels crept again out of the crannies, and raised their low 
 canopies over the heads of the browsing sheep and goats. 
 A stream, brown with turf-mould, and fierce with battles 
 with the boulders, made a boundary between the stony 
 wilderness and the dark green pastures of Gurthnamuckla. 
 It dashed under a high-backed little bridge with such ex- 
 citement that the black mare, for all her intelligence, curved 
 her neck, and sidled away from the parapet towards Lam- 
 bert's horse. 
 
40 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 Just beyond the bridge, a repulsive-looking old man was 
 sitting on a heap of stones, turning over the contents of a 
 dirty linen pouch. Beside him were an empty milk-can, 
 and a black-and-white dog which had begun by trying to be 
 a collie, and had relapsed into an indifferent attempt at a 
 grey-hound. It greeted the riders with the usual volley of 
 barking, and its owner let fall some of the coppers that he 
 was counting over, in his haste to strike at it with the long 
 stick that was lying beside him. 
 
 " Have done ! Sailor ! Blasht yer sowl ! Have done ! " 
 then, with honeyed obsequiousness, "yer honour's welcome, 
 Mr. Lambert." 
 
 " Is Miss Duffy in the house ? " asked Lambert. 
 
 " She is, she is, yer honour," he answered, in the nasal 
 mumble peculiar to his class, getting up and beginning to 
 shuffle after the horses; " but what young lady is this at all ? 
 Isn't she very grand, God bless her ! " 
 
 "She's Miss Fitzpatrick, Miss Mullen's cousin, Billy," 
 answered Lambert graciously ; approbation could not come 
 from a source too low for him to be susceptible to it. 
 
 The old man came up beside Francie, and, dutching 
 the skirt of her habit, blinked at her with sly and swimming 
 eyes. 
 
 " Fitzpatrick is it ? Begob I knew her grannema well ; 
 she was a fine hearty woman, the Lord have mercy on her ! 
 And she never seen me without she'd give me a shixpence 
 or maybe a shillin'." 
 
 Francie was skilled in the repulse of the Dublin beggar, 
 but this ancestral precedent was something for which she 
 was not prepared. The clutch tightened on her habit and 
 the disgusting old face almost touched it, as Billy pressed 
 close to her, mouthing out incomprehensible blessings and 
 entreaties. She felt afraid of his red eyes and clawing 
 fingers, and she turned helplessly to Lambert. 
 
 " Here, be off now, Billy, you old fool ! " he said ; 
 " we've had enough of you. Run and open the gate." 
 
 The farm-house, with its clump of trees, was close to 
 them, and its drooping iron entrance-gate shrieked resent- 
 fully as the old man dragged it open. 
 
The Real Charlotte. 41 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Miss JULIA DUFFY, the tenant of Gurthnamuckla, was a 
 woman of few friends. The cart track that led to her 
 house was covered with grass, except for two brown ruts and 
 a narrow footpath in the centre, and the boughs of the syca- 
 mores that grew on either side of it drooped low as if ignor- 
 ing the possibility of a visitor. The house door remained 
 shut from year's end to year's end, contrary to the usual 
 kindly Irish custom ; in fact, its rotten timbers were at once 
 supported and barricaded by a diagonal beam that held 
 them together, and was itself beginning to rot under its 
 shroud of cobwebs. The footpath skirted the duckpond in 
 front of the door, and led round the corner of the house to 
 what had been in the palmy days of Gurthnamuckla the 
 stableyard, and wound through its weedy heaps of dirt to 
 the kitchen door. 
 
 Julia Duffy, looking back through the squalors of some 
 sixty years, could remember the days when the hall door 
 used to stand open from morning till night, and her father's 
 guests were many and thirsty, almost as thirsty as he,, 
 though perhaps les$ persistently so. He had been a hard- 
 drinking Protestant farmer, who had married his own dairy- 
 woman, a Roman Catholic, dirty, thriftless^ and a cousin of 
 Norry the Boat ; and he had so disintegrated himself with 
 whisky that his body and soul fell asunder at what was 
 considered by his friends to be the premature age of seventy- 
 two. Julia had always been wont to go to Lismoyle church 
 with her father, not so much as a matter of religious as of 
 social conviction. All the best bonnets in the town went 
 to the parish church, and te a woman of Julia's stamp, 
 whose poor relations wear hoods and shawls over their 
 heads and go to chapel, there is no salvation out of a 
 bonnet. After old John Duffy's death, however, bonnets 
 and the aristocratic way of salvation seemed together to 
 rise out of his daughter's scope. Chapel she despised with 
 all the fervour of an Irish Protestant, but if the farm was 
 to be kept and the rent paid, there was no money to spare 
 for bonnets. Therefore Julia, in defiance of the entreaties 
 of her mother's priest and her own parson, would have 
 
42 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 nothing of either chapel or church, and stayed sombrely at 
 home. Marriage had never come near her ; in her father's 
 time the necessary dowry had not been forthcoming, and 
 even her ownership of the farm was not enough to counter- 
 balance her ill-looks and her pagan habits. 
 
 As in a higher grade of society science sometimes steps 
 in when religion fails, so, in her moral isolation, Julia 
 Duffy turned her attention to the mysteries of medicine 
 and the culture of herbs. By the time her mother died she 
 had established a position as doctor and wise woman, 
 which was immensely abetted by her independence of the 
 ministrations of any church. She was believed in by the 
 people, but there was no liking in the belief; when they 
 spoke to her they called her Miss Duffy, in deference to a 
 now impalpable difference in rank as well as in recognition 
 of her occult powers, and they kept as clear of her as they 
 conveniently could. The payment of her professional 
 services was a matter entirely in the hands of the people 
 themselves, and ranged, according to the circumstances of 
 the case, from a score of eggs or a can of buttermilk, to a 
 crib of turf or " the makings " of a homespun flannel petti- 
 coat. Where there was the possibility of a fee it never 
 failed ; where there was not, Julia Duffy gave her " yerreb 
 tay " (/.<?., herb tea) and Holloway's pills without question 
 or hesitation. 
 
 No one except herself knew how vital these offerings 
 were to her. The farm was still hers, and, perhaps, in all 
 her jealous unsunned nature, the only note of passion was 
 her feeling for the twenty acres that, with the house, re- 
 mained to her of her father's possessions. She had owned 
 the farm for twenty years now, and had been the abhorrence 
 and the despair of each successive Bruff agent. The land 
 went from bad to worse ; ignorance, neglect and poverty, 
 are a formidable conjunction even without the moral sup 
 port that the Land League for a few years had afforded her, 
 and Miss Duffy tranquilly defied Mr. Lambert, offering 
 him at intervals such rent as she thought fitting, while she 
 sub-let her mossy, deteriorated fields to a Lismoyle grazier. 
 Perhaps her nearest approach to pleasure was the time at 
 the beginning of each year when she received and dealt 
 with the offers for the grazing ; then she tasted the sweets 
 
The Real Charlotte. 43 
 
 of ownership, and then she condescended to dole out to 
 Mr. Lambert such payment " on account " as she deemed 
 advisable, confronting his remonstrances with her indisput- 
 able poverty, and baffling his threats with the recital of a 
 promise that she should never be disturbed in her father's 
 farmj made to her, she alleged, by Sir Benjamin Dysart, 
 when she entered upon her inheritance. 
 
 There had been a time when a barefooted serving-girl 
 had suffered under Miss Duffy's rule ; but for the last few 
 years the times had been bad, the price of grazing had 
 fallen, and the mistress's temper and the diet having fallen 
 in a corresponding ratio, the bondwoman had returned to 
 her own people and her father's house, and no successor 
 had been found to take her place. That is to say, no re- 
 cognised successor. But, as fate would have it, on the 
 very day that " Moireen Rhu " had wrapped her shawl 
 about her head, and stumped, with cursings, out of the 
 house of bondage, the vague stirrings that regulate the 
 perambulations of beggars had caused Billy Grainy to 
 resolve upon Gurthnamuckla as the place where he would, 
 after the manner of his kind, ask for a walletful of pota- 
 toes and a night's shelter. A week afterwards he was still 
 there, drawing water, bringing in turf, feeding the cow, and 
 receiving, in return for these offices, his board and lodging 
 and the daily dressing of a sore shin which had often 
 coerced the most uncharitable to hasty and nauseated alms- 
 giving. The arrangement glided into permanency, and 
 Billy fell into a life of lazy routine that was preserved from 
 stagnation by a daily expedition to Lismoyle to sell milk for 
 Miss Duffy, and to do a little begging on his own account. 
 
 Gurthnamuckla had still about it some air of the older 
 days when Julia Duffy's grandfather was all but a gentleman, 
 and her drunken father and dairymaid mother were in their 
 cradles. The tall sycamores that bordered the cart track 
 were witnesses to the time when it had been an avenue, and 
 the lawn-like field was yellow in spring with the daffodils of 
 a former civilisation. The tops of the trees were thick with 
 nests, and the grave cawing of rooks made a background of 
 mellow, serious respectability that had its effect even upon 
 Francie. She said something to this intent as she and 
 Lambert jogged along the grass by the track. 
 
44 ^e Real Charlotte. 
 
 " Nice ! " returned her companion with enthusiasm, " I 
 should think it was ! I'd make that one of the sweetest 
 little places in the country if I had it. There's no better 
 grass for young horses anywhere, and there's first-class 
 stabling. I can tell you you're not the only one that thinks 
 it's a nice place," he continued, " but this old devil that has 
 it won't give it up ; she'd rather let the house rot to pieces 
 over her head than go out of it." 
 
 They rode past the barricaded hall door, and round the 
 corner of the house into the yard, and Lambert called for 
 Miss Duffy for some time in vain. Nothing responded ex- 
 cept the turkey cock, who answered each call with an 
 infuriated gobble, and a donkey, who, in the dark recesses 
 of a cow-house, lifted up his voice in heartrending rejoinder. 
 At last a window fell down with a bang in the upper story, 
 and the mistress of the house put out her head. Francie 
 had only time to catch a glimpse of a thin dirty face, a 
 hooked nose, and unkempt black hair, before the vision was 
 withdrawn, and a slipshod step was heard coming down- 
 stairs. 
 
 When Miss Duffy appeared at her kitchen door, she had 
 flung a shawl round her head, possibly to conceal the fact 
 that her crinkled mat of hair held thick in it, like powder, 
 the turf ashes of many sluttish days. Her stained and torn 
 black skirt had evidently just been unpinned from about her 
 waist, and was hitched up at one side, showing a frayed red 
 Galway petticoat, and that her feet had recently been thrust 
 into her boots was attested by the fact that their laces trailed 
 on the ground beside her. In spite of these disadvantages, 
 however, it was with a manner of the utmost patronage that 
 she greeted Mr. Lambert. 
 
 " I would ask you and the young leedy to dismount," she 
 continued, in the carefully genteel voice that she clung to in 
 the wreck of her fortunes, " but I am, as you will see," she 
 made a gesture with a dingy hand, " quite ' in dishabilly,' as 
 they say ; I've been a little indisposed, and " 
 
 " Oh, no matter, Miss Duffy," interrupted Lambert, " I 
 only wanted to say a few words to you on business, and 
 Miss Fitzpatrick will ride about the place till we're done." 
 
 Miss Duffy's small black eyes turned quickly to Francie. 
 
 "Oh, indeed, is that Miss Fitzpatrick? My fawther 
 
The Real Charlotte. 45 
 
 knew her grandfawther. I am much pleased to make her 
 acquaintance." 
 
 She inclined her head as she spoke, and Francie, with 
 much disposition to laugh, bowed hers in return ; each 
 instant Miss Duffy's resemblance, both in feature and cos- 
 tume, to a beggar woman who frequented the comer of 
 Sackville Street, was becoming harder to bear with fortitude, 
 and she was delighted to leave Lambert to his tete-a-tete and 
 ride out into the lawn, among the sycamores and hawthorns, 
 where the black mare immediately fell to devouring grass 
 with a resolve that was quite beyond Francie's power to 
 combat. 
 
 ' She broke a little branch off a low-growing ash tree, to 
 keep away the flies that were doing their best to spoil the 
 pleasure of a perfect afternoon, and sat there, fanning her- 
 self lazily, while the mare, with occasional impatient tugs at 
 the reins and stampings at the flies, cropped her way 
 onwards from one luscious tuft to another. The Lismoyle 
 grazier's cattle had collected themselves under the trees at 
 the farther end of the lawn, where a swampy pool still re- 
 mained of the winter encroachments of the lake. In the 
 sunshine at the other side of the wall, a chain of such pools 
 stretched to the broad blue water, and grey lime'stone rocks 
 showed above the tangle of hemlock and tall spikes of 
 magenta foxgloves. A white sail stood dazzlingly out in the 
 turquoise blue of a band of calm, and the mountains on the 
 farther side of the lake were palely clothed in thinnest 
 lavender and most ethereal green. 
 
 It might have been the unexpected likeness that she 
 had found in Julia Duffy to her old friend the beggar woman 
 that took Francie's thoughts away from this idyll of per- 
 fected summer to the dry, grey Dublin streets that had been 
 her uttermost horizon a week ago. The milkman generally 
 called at the Fitzpatricks' house at about this hour; the 
 clank of his pint measure against the area railings, even his 
 pleasantries with Maggie the cook, relative to his bestowing 
 an extra " sup for the cat," were suddenly and sharply pre- 
 sent with her. The younger Fitzpatrick children would be 
 home from school, and would be raging through the kitchen 
 seeking what they might devour in the interval before the 
 six o'clock dinner, and she herself would probably have been 
 
46 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 engaged in a baking game of tennis in the square outside 
 her uncle's house. She felt very sorry for Aunt Tish when 
 she thought of that hungry gang of sons and daughters and 
 of the evil days that had come upon the excellent and re- 
 spectable Uncle Robert, and the still more evil days that 
 would come in another fortnight or so, when the whole 
 bursting party had squeezed themselves into a little house 
 at Bray, there to exist for an indefinite period on Irish stew, 
 strong tea, and a diminished income. There was a kind of 
 understanding that when they were " settled " she was to go 
 back to them, and blend once more her five and twenty 
 pounds a year with the Fitzpatrick funds ; but this afternoon, 
 with the rich summer stillness and the blaze of buttercups 
 all about her, and the unfamiliar feeling of the mare's rest- 
 less shoulder under her knee, she was exceedingly glad that 
 the settling process would take some months at least. She 
 was not given to introspection, and could not have said any- 
 thing in the least interesting about her mental or moral 
 atmosphere ; she was too uneducated and too practical for 
 any self-communings of this kind ; but she was quite certain 
 of two things, that in spite of her affection for the Fitz- 
 patricks she was very glad she was not going to spend the 
 summer in Dublin or Bray, and also, that in spite of certain 
 bewildering aspects of her cousin Charlotte, she was begin- 
 ning to have what she defined to herself as "a high old 
 time." 
 
 It was somewhere about this period in her meditations 
 that she became aware of a slight swishing and puffing 
 sound from the direction of the lake, and a steam-launch 
 came swiftly along close under the shore. She was a smart- 
 looking boat, spick and span as white paint and a white 
 funnel with a brass band could make her, and in her were 
 seated two men ; one, radiant in a red and white blazer, was 
 steering, while the other, in clothes to which even distance 
 failed to lend enchantment, was menially engaged in break- 
 ing coals with a hammer. The boughs of the trees inter- 
 vened exasperatingly between Francie and this glittering 
 vision, and the resolve to see it fully lent her the power to 
 drag the black mare from her repast, and urge her forward 
 to an opening where she could see and be seen, two equally 
 important objects. 
 
The Real Charlotte. 47 
 
 She had instantly realised that these were those heroes of 
 romance, "the Lismoyle officers," the probabilities of her 
 alliance with one of whom had been the subject of some 
 elegant farewell badinage on the part of her bosom friend, 
 Miss Fanny Hemphill. Francie's acquaintance with the 
 British army had hitherto been limited to one occasion 
 when, at a Sandymount evening band performance, " one of 
 the officers from Beggars' Bush Barracks " so she had con- 
 fided to Miss Hemphill had taken off his hat to her, and 
 been very polite until Aunt Tish had severely told him that 
 no true gentleman would converse with a lady without she 
 was presented to him, and had incontinently swept her home. 
 She could see them quite plainly now, and from the fact that 
 the man who had been rooting among the coals was now 
 sitting up, evidently at the behest of the steersman, and 
 looking at her, it was clear that she had attracted attention 
 too. Even the black mare pricked her ears, and stared at 
 this new kind of dragon-fly creature that went noisily by, 
 leaving a feathery smear on the air behind it, and just then 
 Mr. Lambert rode out of the stableyard, and looked about 
 him for his charge. 
 
 " Francie ! " he called with perceptible impatience ; " what 
 are you at down there ? " 
 
 The steam-launch had by this time passed the opening, 
 and Francie turned and rode towards him. Her hat was a 
 good deal on the back of her head, and her brilliant hair 
 caught the sunshine ; the charm of her supple figure atoned 
 for the crookedness of her seat, and her eyes shone with an 
 excitement born of the delightful sight of soldiery. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Lambert, weren't those the officers ? " she cried, 
 as he rode up to her ; " which was which ? Haven't they a 
 grand little steamer ? " 
 
 Lambert's temper had apparently not been improved by 
 his conversation with Julia Duffy; instead of answering 
 Miss Fitzpatrick he looked at her with a clouded brow, and 
 in his heart he said, " Damn the officers ! " 
 
 " I wonder which of them is the captain ? " continued 
 Francie ; " I suppose it is the little fair one ; he was much 
 the best dressed, and he was making the other one do all 
 the work ? " 
 
 Lambert gave a scornful laugh. 
 
48 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 " I'll leave you to find that out for yourself. I'll engage 
 it won't be long before you know all about them. You've 
 made a good start already." 
 
 "Oh, very well," replied Francie, letting fall both the 
 reins in order to settle her hat ; " some day you'll be asking 
 me something, and I won't tell you, and then you'll be 
 sorry." 
 
 " Some day you'll be breaking your neck, and then you'll 
 be sorry," retorted Lambert, taking up the fallen reins. 
 
 They rode out of the gate of Gurthnamuckla in silence, 
 and after a mile of trotting, which was to Francie a period 
 of mingled pain and anxiety, the horses slackened of their 
 own accord, and began to pick their way gingerly over the 
 smooth sheets of rock that marked the entry of the road into 
 the stony tract mentioned in the last chapter. Francie took 
 the opportunity for a propitiatory question. 
 
 "What were you and the old woman talking about all 
 that time ? I thought you were never coming." 
 
 " Business," said Lambert shortly ; then viciously, " if 
 any conversation with a woman can ever be called busi- 
 ness." 
 
 " Oho ! then you couldn't get her to do what you 
 wanted ! " laughed Francie ; " very good for you too 1 I 
 think you always get your own way." 
 
 " Is that your opinion ? " said Lambert, turning his dark 
 eyes upon her ; " I'm sorry I can't agree with you." 
 
 The fierce heat had gone out of the afternoon as they 
 passed along the lonely road, through the country of rocks 
 and hazel bushes ; the sun was sending low flashes into 
 their eyes from the bright mirror of the lake ; the goats that 
 hopped uncomfortably about in the enforced and detested 
 tcte-btete caused by a wooden yoke across their necks, cast 
 blue shadows of many-legged absurdity on the warm slabs 
 of stone ; a carrion crow, swaying on the thin topmost 
 bough of a thorn-bush, a blot in the mellow afternoon sky, 
 was looking about him if haply he could see a wandering 
 kid whose eyes would serve him for his supper; and a 
 couple of miles away, at Rosemount, Mrs. Lambert wag 
 sending down to be kept hot what she and Charlotte had 
 left of the Sally Lunn. 
 
 Francie was not sorry when she found herself again under 
 
The Real Charlotte. 49 
 
 the trees of the Lismoyle highroad, and in spite of the 
 injuries which the pommels of the saddle were inflicting 
 upon her, and the growing stiffness of all her muscles, she 
 held gallantly on at a sharp trot, till her hair-pins and her 
 hat were loosed from their foundations, and her green habit 
 rose in ungainly folds. They were nearing Rosemount 
 when they heard wheels behind them. Lambert took the 
 left side of the road, and the black mare followed his 
 example with such suddenness, that Francie, when she had 
 recovered her equilibrium, could only be thankful that 
 nothing more than her hat had come off. With the first in- 
 stinct of woman she snatched at the coils of hair that fell 
 down her back and hung enragingly over her eyes, and tried 
 to wind them on to her head again. She became horribly 
 aware that a waggonette with several people in 'it had pulled 
 up beside her, and, finally, that a young man with a clean- 
 shaved face and an eyeglass was handing her her hat and 
 taking off his own. 
 
 Holding in her teeth the few hair-pins that she had been 
 able to save from the wreck, she stammered a gratitude 
 that she was far from feeling ; and when she heard Lambert 
 say, " Oh, thank you, Dysart, you just saved me getting off," 
 she felt that her discomfiture was complete. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 CHRISTOPHER DYSART was a person about whom Lismoyle 
 and its neighbourhood had not been able to come to a satis- 
 factory conclusion, unless, indeed, that conclusion can be 
 called satisfactory which admitted him to be a disappoint- 
 ment. From the time that, as a shy, plain little boy he 
 first went to school, and, after the habit of boys, ceased to 
 exist except in theory and holidays, a steady undercurrent 
 of interest had always set about him. His mother was so 
 charming, and his father so delicate, and he himself so con- 
 veniently contemporary with so many daughters, that 
 although the occasional glimpses vouchsafed of him during 
 his Winchester and Oxford career were as discouraging as 
 they were brief, it was confidently expected that he would 
 emerge from his boyish shyness when he came to take his 
 
 D 
 
50 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 proper place in the county and settle down at Bruff. Thus 
 Lady Eyrefield, and Mrs. Waller, and their like, the careful 
 mothers of those contemporaneous daughters, and thus also, 
 after their kind, the lesser ladies of Lismoyle. 
 
 But though Christopher was now seven and twenty he 
 seemed as far from " taking his place in the county " as he 
 had ever been. His mother's friends had no particular 
 fault to find with him ; that was a prominent feature in their 
 dissatisfaction. He was quite good-looking enough for an 
 eldest son, and his politeness to their daughters left them 
 nothing to complain of except tfye discouraging fact that it 
 was exceeded by his politeness to themselves. His readi- 
 ness to talk when occasion demanded was undisputed, but 
 his real or pretended dulness in those matters of local in- 
 terest, which no one except an outsider calls gossip, made 
 conversation with him a hollow and heartless affair. One 
 of his most exasperating points was that he could not be 
 referred to any known type. He was " between the sizes," 
 as shopmen say of gloves. He was not smart and aggres- 
 sive enough for the soldiering type, nor sporting enough for 
 the country gentleman, but neither had he the docility and 
 attentiveness of the ideal curate; he could not even be lightly 
 disposed of as an eccentricity, which would have been some 
 sort of consolation. 
 
 " If I ever could have imagined that Isabel Dysart's son 
 would have turned out like this," said the Dowager Lady 
 Eyrefield, in a moment of bitterness, " I should not have 
 given myself the trouble of writing to Castlemore about 
 taking him out as his secretary. I thought all those func- 
 tions and dinner parties would have done something for 
 him, but though they polished up his manners, and im- 
 proved that most painful and unfortunate stutter, he's at 
 heart just as much a stick as ever." 
 
 Lismoyle was, according to its lights, equally nonplussed. 
 Mrs. Baker had, indeed, suggested that it was sending him 
 to these grand English universities, instead of to Trinity 
 College, Dublin, that had taken the fun out of him in the 
 first going off, and what finished him was going out to those 
 Barbadoes, with all the blacks bowing down to him, and his 
 liver growing the size of I don't know what with the heat. 
 Mrs. Corkran, the widow of the late rector of Lismoyle, had, 
 
The Real Charlotte. 51 
 
 however, rejoined that she had always found Mr. Dysart a 
 most humble-minded young man on the occasions when 
 she had met him at his cousin Mrs. Gascogne's, and by no 
 means puffed up with his rank or learning. This proposi- 
 tion Mrs. Baker had not attempted to dispute, but none the 
 less she had felt it to be beside the point. She had not 
 found that Christopher's learning had disposed him to come 
 to her tennis parties, and she did not feel humility to be a 
 virtue that graced a young man of property. Certainly, in 
 spite of his humility, she could not venture to take him to 
 task for his neglect of her entertainments as she could Mr. 
 Hawkins ; but then it is still more certain that Christopher 
 would not, as Mr. Hawkins had often done, sit down before 
 her, as before a walled town, and so skilfully entreat her 
 that in five minutes all would have been forgiven and 
 forgotten, 
 
 It was, perhaps, an additional point of aggravation that, 
 dull and unprofitable though he was considered to be, 
 Christopher had amusements of his own in which the 
 neighbourhood had no part. Since he had returned from 
 the West Indies, his three-ton cutter with the big Una sail 
 had become one of the features of the lake, but though a 
 red parasol was often picturesquely visible above the gun- 
 wale, the knowledge that it sheltered his sister deprived it 
 of the almost painful interest that it might otherwise have 
 had, and at the same time gave point to a snub that was 
 unintentionally effective and comprehensive. There were 
 many sunny mornings on which Mr. Dysart's camera occupied 
 commanding positions in the town, or its outskirts, while its 
 owner photographed groups of old women and donkeys, 
 regardless of the fact that Miss Kathleen Baker, in her 
 most becoming hat, had taken her younger sister from the 
 schoolroom to play a showy game of lawn tennis in the 
 garden in front of her father's villa, or was, with Arcadian 
 industry, cutting buds off the roses that dropped their pink 
 petals over the low wall on to the road. It was .quite inex- 
 plicable that the photographer should pack up his camera 
 and walk home without taking advantage of this artistic 
 opportunity beyond a civil lift of his cap; and at such times 
 Miss Baker would re-enter the villa with a feeling of con- 
 tempt for Mr. Dysart that was almost too deep for words. 
 
$2 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 She might have been partially consoled had she known 
 that on a June morning not long after the latest of these 
 repulses, her feelings were fully shared by the person whom, 
 for the last two Sundays, she had looked at in the Dysart 
 pew with a respectful dislike that implied the highest com- 
 pliment in her power. Miss Evelyn Hope - Drummond 
 stood at the bow-window of the Bruff drawing-room and 
 looked out over the gravelled terrace, across the flower- 
 garden and the sunk fence, to the clump of horse chestnuts 
 by the lake-side. Beyond these the cattle were standing 
 knee-deep in the water, and on the flat margin a pair of 
 legs in white flannel trousers was all that the guest, whom 
 his mother delighted to honour, could see of Christopher 
 Dysart. The remainder of him wrestled beneath a black 
 velvet pall with the helplessly wilful legs of his camera, and 
 all his mind, as Miss Hope-Drummond well knew, was con- 
 centrated upon cows. Her first visit to Ireland was proving 
 less amusing than she had expected, she thought, and as 
 she watched Christopher she wished fervently that she had 
 not offered to carry any of his horrid things across the park 
 for him. In the flower-garden below the terrace she could 
 see Lady Dysart and Pamela in deep consultation over an 
 infirm rose-tree; a wheelbarrow full of pans of seedlings 
 sufficiently indicated what their occupation would be for 
 the rest of the morning, and she felt it was of a piece with 
 the absurdities of Irish life that the ladies of the house 
 should enjoy doing the gardener's work for him. The 
 strong scent of heated Gloire de Dijon roses came through 
 the window, and suggested to her how well one of them 
 would suit with her fawn-coloured Redfern gown, and she 
 leaned out to pick a beautiful bud that was swaying in the 
 sun just within reach. 
 
 " Ha a ah ! I see ye, missy ! Stop picking my 
 flowers ! Push, James Canavan, you devil, you ! Push ! " 
 
 A bath-chair, occupied by an old man in a tall hat, and 
 pushed by a man also in a tall hat, had suddenly turned the 
 corner of the house, and Miss Hope-Drummond drew back 
 precipitately to avoid the uplifted walking-stick of Sir Ben- 
 jamin Dysart. 
 
 " Oh, fie, for shame, Sir Benjamin ! " exclaimed the man 
 who had been addressed as James Canavan. " Pray, cull 
 
The Real Charlotte. 53 
 
 the rose, miss," he continued, with a flourish of his hand ; 
 " sweets to the sweet ! " 
 
 Sir Benjamin aimed a backward stroke with his oak stick 
 at his attendant, a stroke in which long practice had failed 
 to make him perfect, and in the exchange of further ameni- 
 ties the party passed out of sight. This was not Miss Hope- 
 Drummond's first meeting with her host. His bath-chair 
 had daily, as it seemed to her, lain in wait in the shrubberies, 
 to cause terror to the solitary, and discomfiture to t$te-a- 
 tetes ; and on one morning he had stealthily protruded the 
 crook of his stick from the door of his room as she went by, 
 and all but hooked her round the ankle with it. 
 
 " Really, it is disgraceful that he is not locked up," she 
 said to herself crossly, as she gathered the contested bud, 
 and sat down to write letters ; " but in Ireland no one seems 
 to think anything of anything ! " 
 
 It was very hot down in the garden where Lady Dysart 
 and Pamela were at work ; Lady Dysart kneeling in the in- 
 adequate shade of a parasol, whose handle she had propped 
 among the pans in the wheelbarrow, and Pamela weeding a 
 flower-bed a few yards away. It was altogether a scene 
 worthy in its domestic simplicity of the Fairchild Family, 
 only that instead of Mr. Fairchild, " stretched on the grass 
 at a little distance with his book," a bronze-coloured dach- 
 shund lay roasting his long side in the sun ; and also that 
 Lady Dysart, having mistaken the young chickweed in a 
 seedling pan for the asters that should have been there, was 
 filling her bed symmetrically with the former, an imbecility 
 that Mrs. Sherwood would never have permitted in a parent. 
 The mother and daughter lifted their heads at the sound of 
 the conflict on the terrace. 
 
 " Papa will frighten Evelyn into a fit," observed Pamela, 
 rubbing a midge off her nose with an earthy gardening glove; 
 " I wish James Canavan could be induced to keep him away 
 from the house." 
 
 " It's^all right, dear," said Lady Dysart, panting a little as 
 she straightened her back and surveyed her rows of chick- 
 weed ; " Christopher is with her, and you know he never 
 notices anyone else when Christopher is there." 
 
 Lady Dysart had in her youth married, with a little judi- 
 cious coercion, a man thirty years older than herself, and 
 
54 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 after a long and, on the whole, extremely unpleasant period 
 of matrimony, she was now enjoying a species of Indian 
 summer, dating from six years back, when Christopher's 
 coming of age and the tenants' rejoicings thereat, had caused 
 such a paroxysm of apoplectic jealousy on the part of Chris- 
 topher's father as, combining with the heat of the day, had 
 brought on a " stroke." Since then the bath-chair and 
 James Canavan had mercifully intervened between him and 
 the rest of the world, and his offspring were now able to fly 
 before him with a frankness and success impossible in the 
 old days. 
 
 Pamela did not answer her mother at once. 
 
 " Do you know I'm afraid Christopher isn't with her," she 
 said, looking both guilty and perturbed. 
 
 Lady Dysart groaned aloud. 
 
 "Why, where is he?" she demanded. "I left Evelyn 
 helping him to paste in photographs after breakfast; I 
 thought that would have been nice occupation for them for 
 at least two hours ; but as for Christopher " she continued, 
 her voice deepening to declamation, " it is quite hopeless to 
 expect anything from him. I should rather trust Garry to 
 entertain anyone. The day he took her out in the boat thej 
 weren't in till six o'clock ! " 
 
 " That was because Garry ran the punt on the shallow, 
 and they had to wade ashore and walk all the way round." 
 
 " That has nothing to say to it ; at all events they had 
 something to talk about when they came back, which is 
 more than Christopher has when he has been out sailing. 
 It is most disheartening ; I ask nice girls to the house, but 
 I might just as well ask nice boys Oh, of course, yes " 
 in answer to a protest from her daughter ; " he talks to 
 them ; but you know quite well what I mean." 
 
 This complaint was not the first indication of Lady 
 Dysart's sentiments about this curious son whom she had 
 produced. She was a clever woman, a renowned solver of 
 the acrostics in her society paper, and a holder of strong 
 opinions as to the prophetic meaning of the Pyramids ; but 
 Christopher was an acrostic in a strange language, an enigma 
 beyond her sphere. She had a vague but rooted feeling 
 that young men were normally in love with somebody, or at 
 east pretending to be so; it was, of course, an excellent 
 
T/ie Real Charlotte. 55 
 
 thing that Christopher did not lose his heart to the wrong 
 people, but she would probably have preferred the agitation 
 of watching his progress through the most alarming flirtations 
 to the security that deprived conversation with other mothers 
 of much of its legitimate charm. 
 
 "Well, there was Miss Fetherstone," began Pamela after 
 a moment of obvious consideration. 
 
 " Miss Fetherstone ! " echoed Lady Dysart in her richest 
 contralto, fixing eyes of solemn reproach upon her daughter, 
 " do you suppose that for one instant I thought there was 
 anything in that ? No baby, no idiot baby, could have 
 believed in it ! " 
 
 " Well, I don't know," said Pamela ; " I think you and 
 Mrs. Waller believed in it, at least I remember you both 
 settling what your wedding presents were to be ! " 
 
 "/never said a word about wedding presents, it was Mrs. 
 Waller ! Of course she was anxious about her own niece, 
 just as anybody would have been under the circumstances." 
 Lady Dysart here became aware of something in Pamela's 
 expression that made her add hurriedly, " Not that 2 ever 
 had the faintest shadow of belief in it. Too well do I know 
 Christopher's platonic philanderings ; and you see the affair 
 turned out just as I said it would." 
 
 Pamela refrained from pursuing her advantage. 
 
 " If you like I'll make him come with Evelyn and me to 
 the choir practice this afternoon," she said after a pause. 
 " Of course he'll hate it, poor boy, especially as Miss Mullen 
 wrote to me the other day and asked us to come to tea after 
 it was over." 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " said Lady Dysart with sudden interest and 
 forgetfulness of her recent contention, "and you will see the 
 new importation whom we met with Mr. Lambert the other 
 day. What a charming young creature she looked ! * The 
 fair one with the golden locks ' was the only description for 
 her ! And yet that miserable Christopher will only say that 
 she is ' chocolate-boxey ! ' Oh ! I have no patience with 
 Christopher's affectation ! " she ended, rising from her knees 
 and brushing the earth from her extensive lap with a gesture 
 of annoyance. She began to realise that the sun was hot 
 and luncheon late, and it was at this unpropitious moment 
 that Pamela, having finished the flower-bed she had 
 
56 Tlie Real Charlotte. 
 
 been weeding, approached the scene of her mother's 
 labours. 
 
 " Mamma," she said faintly, " you have planted the whole 
 bed with chickweed ! " 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 IT had been hard work pulling the punt across from Bruff 
 to Lismoyle with two well-grown young women sitting in the 
 stern ; it had been a hot walk up from the landing-place to 
 the church, but worse than these, transcendently worse, in 
 that it involved the suffering of the mind as well as the body, 
 was the choir practice. Christopher's long nose drooped 
 despondingly over his Irish church hymnal, and his long 
 back had a disconsolate hoop in it as he leaned it against 
 the wall in his place in the backmost row of the choir 
 benches. The chants had been long and wearisome, and 
 the hymns were proving themselves equally enduring. 
 Christopher was not eminently musical or conspicuously 
 religious, and he regarded with a kind of dismal respect and 
 surprise the fervour in Pamela's pure profile as she turned 
 to Mrs. Gascogne and suggested that the hymn they had 
 just gone through twice should be sung over again. He 
 supposed it was because she had High Church tendencies 
 that she was able to stand this sort of thing, and his mind 
 drifted into abstract speculations as to how people could be 
 as good as Pamela was and live. 
 
 In the interval before the last hymn he derived a tempor- 
 ary solace from finding his own name inscribed in dull red 
 characters in the leaf of his hymn-book, with, underneath in 
 the same colour, the fateful inscription, " Written in blood 
 by Garrett Dysart." The thought of his younger brother 
 utilising pleasantly a cut finger and the long minutes of the 
 archdeacon's sermon, had for the moment inspired Christo- 
 pher with a sympathetic amusement, but he had relapsed 
 into his pristine gloom. He knew the hymn perfectly well 
 by this time, and his inoffensive tenor joined mechanically 
 with the other voices, while his eyes roamed idly over the 
 two rows of people in front of him. There was nothing 
 suggestive of ethereal devotion about Pamela's neighbours. 
 
The Real Charlotte. 5; 
 
 Miss Mullen's heaving shoulders and extended jaw spoke of 
 nothing but her determination to out-scream everyone else ; 
 Miss Hope-Drummond and the curate, on the bench in 
 front of him, were singing primly out of the same hymn- 
 book, the curate obviously frightened, Miss Hope-Drummond 
 as obviously disgusted. The Misses Beattie were furtively 
 eyeing Miss Hope-Drummond's costume ; Miss Kathleen 
 Baker was openly eyeing the curate, whose hymn-book she 
 had been wont to share at happier choir practices, and Miss 
 Fitzpatrick, seated at the end of the row, was watching from 
 the gallery window with unaffected interest the progress of 
 the usual weekly hostilities between Pamela's dachshund 
 and the sexton's cat, and was not even pretending to occupy 
 herself with the business in hand. Christopher's eyes rested 
 on her appraisingly, with the minute observation of short 
 sight, fortified by an eyeglass, and was aware of a small 
 head with a fluffy halo of conventionally golden hair, a 
 straight and slender neck, and an appleblossom curve of 
 cheek ; he found himself wishing that she would turn a little 
 further round. 
 
 The hymn had seven verses, and Pamela and Mrs. Gas- 
 cogne were going inexorably through them all ; the school- 
 master and schoolmistress, an estimable couple, sole prop 
 of the choir on wet Sundays, were braying brazenly beside 
 him, and this was only the second hymn. Christopher's D 
 sharp melted into a yawn, and before he could screen it 
 with his hymn-book, Miss Fitzpatrick looked round and 
 caught him in the act. A suppressed giggle and a quick lift 
 of the eyebrows instantly conveyed to him that his sentiments 
 were comprehended and sympathised with, and he as in- 
 stantly was conscious that Miss Mullen was following the 
 direction of her niece's eye. Lady Dysart's children did 
 not share her taste for Miss Mullen ; Christopher vaguely 
 felt some offensive flavour in the sharp smiling glance in 
 which she included him and Francie, and an unexplainable 
 sequence of thought mrde him suddenly decide that her 
 niece was as second-rate as might have been expected. 
 
 Never had the choir dragged so hopelessly ; never had 
 Mrs. Gascogne and Pamela compelled their victims to deal 
 with so many and difficult tunes, and never at any previous 
 choir practice had Christopher registered so serious a vow 
 
58 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 that under no pretext whatever should Pamela entice him 
 there again. They were all sitting down now, while the 
 leaders consulted together about the Kyrie, and the gallery 
 cushions slowly turned to stone in their well-remembered 
 manner. Christopher's ideas of church-going were insepar- 
 ably bound up with those old gallery cushions. He had sat 
 upon them ever since, as a small boy, he had chirped a treble 
 beside his governess, and he knew every knob in their anatomy. 
 There is something blighting to the devotional tendencies in 
 the atmosphere of a gallery. He had often formulated this 
 theory for his own exculpation, lying flat on his back in a 
 punt in some shady backwater, with the Oxford church bells 
 reminding him reproachfully of Lismoyle Sundajs, and of 
 Pamela, the faithful, conscientious Pamela, whipping up 
 the pony to get to church before the bell stopped. Now, after 
 a couple of months' renewed acquaintance with the choir, 
 the theory had hardened into a tedious truism, and when at 
 last Christopher's long legs were free to carry him down the 
 steep stairs, the malign influence of the gallery had brought 
 their owner to the verge of free thought. 
 
 He did not know how it had happened or by whose dis- 
 position of the forces it had been brought about, but when 
 Miss Mullen's tea-party detached itself from the other mem- 
 bers of the choir at the churchyard gate, Pamela and Miss 
 Hope-Drummond were walking on either side of their hos- 
 tess, and he was behind with Miss Fitzpatrick. 
 
 "You don't appear very fond of hymns, Mr. Dysart," 
 began Francie at once, in the pert Dublin accent that, 
 rightly or wrongly, gives the idea of familiarity. 
 
 " People aren't supposed to look about them in church," 
 replied Christopher with the peculiar suavity which, com- 
 bined with his disconcerting infirmity of pausing before he 
 spoke, had often baffled the young ladies of Barbadoes, and 
 had acquired for him the reputation, perhaps not wholly 
 undeserved, of being a prig. 
 
 "Oh, I daresay!" said Francie, " I suppose that's why 
 you sit in the back seat, that no one'll see you doing it ! " 
 
 There was a directness about this that Lismoyle would 
 not have ventured on, and Christopher looked down at his 
 companion with an increase of interest. 
 
 " No ; I sit there because I can go to sleep." 
 
The Real Charlotte. 59 
 
 " Well, and do you ? and who do you get to wake you ? " 
 her quick voice treading sharply on the heels of his quiet 
 one. " I used always to have to sit beside Uncle Robert in 
 church to pinch him at the end of the sermon." 
 
 " / find it very hard to wake at the end of the sermon 
 too," remarked Christopher, with an experimental curiosity 
 to see what Miss Mullen's unexpected cousin would say 
 next. 
 
 " Do y' indeed ? " said Francie, flashing a look at him of 
 instant comprehension and complete sangfroid. " I'll lend 
 the schoolmistress a hat-pin if you like ! What on earth 
 makes men so sleepy in church I don't know," she con- 
 tinued ; " at our church in Dublin I used to be looking at 
 them. All the gentlemen sit in the corner seat next the 
 aisle, because they're the most comfortable, y' know, and 
 from the minute the clergyman gives out the text " she 
 made a little gesture with her hand, showing thereby that 
 half the buttons were off her glove " they're snoring ! " 
 
 How young she was, and how pretty, and how inex- 
 pressibly vulgar ! Christopher thought all these things in 
 turn, while he did what in him lay to continue the con- 
 versation in the manner expected of him. The effort was 
 perhaps not very successful, as, after a few minutes, it was 
 evident that Francie was losing her first freedom of dis 
 course, and was casting about for topics more appropriate 
 to what she had heard of Mr. Dysart's mental and literary 
 standard. 
 
 " I hear you're a great photographer, Mr. Dysart," she 
 began. " Miss Mullen says you promised to take a picture 
 of her and her cats, and she was telling me to remind you 
 of it. Isn't it awfully clever of you to be able to do 
 it?" 
 
 To this form of question reply is difficult, especially when 
 it is put with all the good faith of complete ignorance. 
 Christopher evaded the imbecilities of direct response. 
 
 " I shall think myself awfully clever if I photograph the 
 cats," he said. 
 
 " Clever ! " she caught him up with a little shriek of 
 laughter. " I can tell you you'll want to be clever ! Are 
 you able to photograph up the chimney or under Norry's 
 bed ? for that's where they always run when a man comes 
 
60 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 into the house, and if you try to stop them they'd claw the 
 face off you ! Oh, they're terrors ! " 
 
 "It's very good of you to tell me all this in time," 
 Christopher said, with a rather absent laugh. He was 
 listening to Miss Mullen's voice, and realising, for the first 
 time, what it would be to live under the same roof with her 
 and her cats ; and yet this girl seemed quite light-hearted 
 and happy. " Perhaps, on the whole, I'd better stay 
 away ? " he said, looking at her, and feeling in the sudden 
 causeless way in which often the soundest conclusions are 
 arrived at, how vast was the chasm between her ideal of 
 life and his own, and linking with the feeling a pity that 
 wonlH have been self-sufficient if it had not also been per- 
 fectly simple. 
 
 " Ah ! don't say you won't come and take the cats ! " 
 Francie exclaimed. 
 
 They reached the Tally Ho gate as she spoke, and the 
 others were only a step or two in front of them. Charlotte 
 looked over her shoulder with a benign smile. 
 
 " What's this I hear about taking my cats?" she said 
 jovially. " You're welcome to everything in my house, Mr. 
 Dysart, but I'll set the police on you if you take my poor 
 cats!" 
 
 " Oh, but I assure you " 
 
 " He's only going to photo them," said Christopher and 
 Francie together. 
 
 " Do you hear them, Miss Dysart ? " continued Charlotte, 
 fumbling for her latch key, " conspiring together to rob a 
 poor lone woman of her only live stock ! " 
 
 She opened the door, and as her visitors entered the hall 
 they caught a glance of Susan's large, stern countenance 
 regarding them with concentrated suspicion through the 
 rails of the staircase. 
 
 " My beauty-boy ! " shouted his mistress, as he vanished 
 upstairs. " Steal him if you can, Mr. Dysart ! " 
 
 Miss Hope-Drummond looked rather more uninterested 
 than is usual in polite society. When she had left the 
 hammock, slung in the shade beside the tennis-ground at 
 Bruff, it had not been to share Mr. Corkran's hymn-book ; 
 still less had it been to walk from the church to Tally Ho 
 between Pamela and a woman whom, from having regarded 
 
The Real Charlotte. 6r 
 
 as merely outr'ee and incomprehensible, she had now come 
 to look upon as rather impertinent. Irish society was in 
 tolerably mixed, she decided, as she sniffed the various 
 odours of the Tally Ho hall, and, with some sub-connection 
 of ideas, made up her mind that photography was a detest- 
 able and silly pursuit for men. While these thoughts were 
 passing beneath her accurately curled fringe, Miss Mullen 
 opened the drawing-room door, and, as they walked in, a 
 short young man in light grey clothes arose from the most 
 comfortable chair to greet them. 
 
 There was surprise and disfavour in Miss Mullen's eye as 
 she extended her hand to him. 
 
 "This is an unexpected pleasure, Mr. Hawkins," she 
 said. 
 
 "Yes," answered Mr. Hawkins cheerfully, taking the 
 hand and doing his best to shake it at the height prescribed 
 by existing fashion, " I thought it would be ; Miss Fitz- 
 patrick asked me to come in this afternoon; didn't you?" 
 addressing himself to Francie. " I got rather a nasty jar 
 when I heard you were all out, but I thought I'd wait for a 
 bit. I knew Miss Dysart always gives 'em fits at the choir 
 practice. All the same, you know, I should have begun to 
 eat the cake if you hadn't come in." 
 
 The round table in the middle of the room was spread, 
 in Louisa's accustomed fashion, as if for breakfast, and in 
 the centre was placed a cake, coldly decked in the silver 
 paper trappings that it had long worn in the grocer's 
 window. 
 
 " 'Twas well for you you didn't ! " said Francie, with, as 
 it seemed to Christopher, a most familiar and challenging 
 laugh. 
 
 " Why ? " inquired Hawkins, looking at her with a respon- 
 sive eye. " What would you have done ? " 
 
 " Plenty," returned Francie unhesitatingly ; " enough to 
 make you sorry anyway ! " 
 
 Mr. Hawkins looked delighted, and was opening his 
 mouth for a suitable rejoinder, when Miss Mullen struck in 
 sharply : 
 
 " Francie, go tell Louisa that I suppose she expects us 
 to stir our tea with our fingers, for there's not a spoon on 
 the table." 
 
62 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 " Oh, let me go," said Hawkins, springing to open the 
 door ; " I know Louisa ; she was very kind to me just now. 
 She hunted all the cats out of the room." Francie was al- 
 ready in the hall, and he followed her. 
 
 The search for Louisa was lengthy, involving much calling 
 for her by Francie, with falsetto imitations by Mr. Hawkins, 
 and finally a pause, during which it might be presumed that 
 the pantry was being explored. Pamela brought her chair 
 nearer to Miss Mullen, who had begun wrathfully to stir 
 her tea with the sugar-tongs, and entered upon a soothing 
 line of questions as to the health and number of the cats ; 
 and Christopher, having cut the grocer's cake, and found 
 that it was the usual conglomerate of tallow, saw-dust, bad 
 eggs, and gravel, devoted himself to thick bread and butter, 
 and to conversation with Miss Hope-Drummond. The 
 period of second cups was approaching, when laughter, and 
 a jingle of falling silver in the hall, told that the search for 
 Louisa was concluded, and Francie and Mr. Hawkins re- 
 entered the drawing-room, the latter endeavouring, not un- 
 successfully, to play the bones with four of Charlotte's best 
 electro-plated teaspoons, while his brown boots moved in 
 the furtive rhythm of an imaginary break-down. Miss 
 Mullen did not even raise her eyes, and Christopher and 
 Miss Hope-Drummond continued their conversation un- 
 moved ; only Pamela acknowledged the histrionic intention 
 with a sympathetic but nervous smile. Pamela's finger was 
 always instinctively on the pulse of the person to whom she 
 was talking, and she knew better than either Francie or 
 Hawkins that they were in disgrace. 
 
 " I'd be obliged to you for those teaspoons, Mr. Hawkins, 
 when you've quite done with them," said Charlotte, with an 
 ugly look at the chief offender's self-satisfied countenance ; 
 " it's a good thing no one except myself takes sugar in their 
 tea." 
 
 " We couldn't help it," replied Mr. Hawkins, unabashed ; 
 "Louisa was out for a walk with her young man, and 
 Miss Fitzpatrick and I had to polish up the teaspoons our- 
 selves." 
 
 Charlotte received this explanation and the teaspoons in 
 lilence as she poured out the delinquents' tea ; there were 
 moments when she permitted herself the satisfaction of 
 
The Real Charlotte. 63 
 
 showing disapproval it she felt it. Francie accepted her 
 cousin's displeasure philosophically, only betraying her 
 sense of the situation by the expressive eye which she 
 turned towards her companion in disgrace over the rim 
 of her tea-cup. But Mr. Hawkins rose to the occasion. 
 He gulped his tepid and bitter cup of tea with every ap- 
 pearance of enjoyment, and having arranged his small 
 moustache with a silk handkerchief, addressed himself un- 
 dauntedly to Miss Mullen. 
 
 " Do you know, I don't believe you have ever been out 
 in our tea-kettle, Miss Mullen. Captain Cursiter and I are 
 feeling very hurt about it." 
 
 " If you mean by ' tea-kettle ' that steamboat thing that 
 I've seen going about the lake," replied Charlotte, making 
 an effort to resume her first attitude of suave and unruffled 
 hospitality, and at the same time to administer needed correc- 
 tion to Mr. Hawkins, " I certainly have not. I have always 
 been taught that it was manners to wait till you're asked." 
 
 " I quite agree with you, Miss Mullen," struck in Pamela ; 
 " we also thought that for a long time, but we had to give 
 it up in the end and ask ourselves ! You are much more 
 honoured than we were." 
 
 " Oh, I say, Miss Dysart, you know it was only our 
 grovelling humility," expostulated Hawkins, " and you 
 always said it dirtied your frock and spoiled the poetry of 
 the lake. You quite put us off taking anybody out. But 
 we've pulled ourselves together now, Miss Mullen, and if 
 you and Miss Fitzpatrick will fix an afternoon to go down 
 the lake, perhaps if Miss Dysart says she's sorry we'll let her 
 come too, and even, if she's very good, bring whoever she 
 likes with her." 
 
 Mr. Hawkins' manner towards ladies had precisely that 
 tone of self-complacent gallantry that Lady Dysart felt to be 
 so signally lacking in her own son, and it was not without its 
 effect even upon Charlotte. It is possible had she been 
 aware that this special compliment to her had been arranged 
 during the polishing of the teaspoons, it might have lost 
 some of its value ; but the thought of steaming forth with 
 the Bruff party and " th' officers," under the very noses of 
 the Lismoyle matrons, was the only point of view that 
 presented itself to her. 
 
64 TJte Real Charlotte. 
 
 "Well, I'll give you no answer till I get Mr. Dysart's 
 opinion. He's the only one of you that knows the lake," 
 she said more graciously. " If you say the steamboat is safe, 
 Mr. Dysart, and you'll come and see we're not drowned by 
 these harum-scarum soldiers, I've no objection to going." 
 
 Further discussion was interrupted by a rush and a scurry 
 on the gravel of the garden path, and a flying ball of fur 
 dashed up the outside of the window, the upper half of 
 which was open, and suddenly realising its safety, poised 
 itself on the sash, and crooned and spat with a collected 
 fury at Mr. Hawkins' bull terrier, who leaped unavailingly 
 below. 
 
 " Oh ! me poor darling Brnffy ! " screamed Miss Mullen, 
 springing up and upsetting her cup of tea ; " she'll be killed ! 
 Call off your dog, Mr. Hawkins ! " 
 
 As if in answer to her call, a tall figure darkened the 
 window, and Mr. Lambert pushed Mrs. Bruff into the room 
 with the handle of his walking-stick. 
 
 " Hullo, Charlotte ! Isn't that Hawkins' dog ? " he began, 
 putting his head in at the window ; then, with a sudden 
 change of manner as he caught sight of Miss Mullen's 
 guests, " oh I had no idea you had anyone here," he said, 
 taking off his hat to as much of Pamela and Miss Hope- 
 Drummond as was not hidden by Charlotte's bulky person, 
 " I only thought I'd call round and see if Francie would like 
 to come out for a row before dinner." 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 WASHERWOMEN do not, as a rule, assimilate the principles 
 of their trade. In Lismoyle, the row of cottages most 
 affected by ladies of that profession was, indeed, planted by 
 the side of the lake, but except in winter, when the floods 
 sent a muddy wash "in at the kitchen doors of Ferry Row, 
 the customers' linen alone had any experience of its waters. 
 The clouds of steam from the cauldrons of boiling clothes 
 ascended from morning till night, and hung in beads upon 
 the sooty cobwebs that draped the rafters ; the food and 
 wearing apparel of the laundresses and their vast families 
 
The Real Charlotte. 65 
 
 mingled horribly with their professional apparatus, and, 
 outside in the road, the filthy children played among 
 puddles that stagnated under an iridescent scum of soap- 
 suds. A narrow strip of goose-nibbled grass divided the 
 road from the lake shore, and at almost any hour of the day 
 there might be seen a slatternly woman or two kneeling by 
 the water's edge, pounding the wet linen on a rock with a flat 
 wooden weapon, according to the immemorial custom of 
 their savage class. 
 
 The Row ended at the ferry pier, and perhaps one reason 
 for the absence of self-respect in the appearance of its in- 
 habitants lay in the fact that the only passers-by were the 
 country people on their way to the ferry, which here, where 
 the lake narrowed to something less than a mile, was the 
 route to the Lismoyle market generally used by the dwellers 
 on the opposite side. The coming of a donkey-cart down 
 the Row was an event to be celebrated with hooting and 
 stone-throwing by the children, and, therefore, it can be 
 understood that when, on a certain still, sleepy afternoon 
 Miss Mullen drove slowly in her phaeton along the line of 
 houses, she created nearly as great a sensation as she would 
 have made in Piccadilly. 
 
 Miss Mullen had one or two sources of income which few 
 people knew of, and about which, with all her loud candour, 
 she did not enlighten even her most intimate friends. Even 
 Mr. Lambert might have been surprised to know that two 
 or three householders in Ferry Row paid rent to her, and 
 that others of them had money dealings with her of a 
 complicated kind, not easy to describe, but simple enough 
 to the strong financial intellect of his predecessor's daughter. 
 No account books were taken with her on these occasions. 
 She and her clients were equally equipped with the abso- 
 lutely accurate business memory of the Irish peasant, a 
 memory that in few cases survives education, but, where it 
 exists, may be relied upon more than all the generations of 
 ledgers and account books. 
 
 Charlotte's visits to Ferry Row were usually made on 
 foot, and were of long duration, but her business on this 
 afternoon was of a trivial character, consisting merely in 
 leaving a parcel at the house of Dinny Lydon, the tailor, 
 and of convincing her washerwoman of iniquity fn a manner 
 
66 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 that brought every other washerwoman to her door, and 
 made each offer up thanks to her most favoured saint that 
 she was not employed by Miss Mullen. 
 
 The long phaeton was at last turned, with draggings at 
 the horse's mouth and grindings of the fore-carriage; the 
 children took their last stare, and one or two ladies whose 
 payments were in arrear emerged from their back gardens 
 and returned to their washing-tubs. If they flattered them- 
 selves that they had been forgotten, they were mistaken j 
 Charlotte had given a glance of grim amusement at the 
 deserted washing-tubs, and as her old phaeton rumbled 
 slowly out of Ferry Row, she was computing the number of 
 customers, and the consequent approximate income of each 
 defaulter. 
 
 To the deep and plainly expressed chagrin of the black 
 horse, he was not allowed to turn in at the gate of Tally Ho, 
 but was urged along the road which led to Rosemount. 
 There again he made a protest, but, yielding to the weighty 
 arguments of Charlotte's whip, he fell into his usual melan- 
 choly jog, and took the turn to Gurthnamuckla with dull 
 resignation. Once steered into that lonely road, Charlotte 
 let him go at his own pace, and sat passive, her mouth 
 tightly closed, and her eyes blinking quickly as she looked 
 straight ahead of her with a slight furrow of concentration 
 on her low forehead. She had the unusual gift of thinking 
 out in advance her line of conversation in an interview, and, 
 which is even less usual, she had the power of keeping to it. 
 By sheer strength of will she could force her plan of action 
 upon other people, as a conjurer forces a card, till they came 
 to believe it was of their own choosing ; she had done it so 
 often that she was now confident of her skill, and she quite 
 understood the inevitable advantage that a fixed scheme of 
 any sort has over indefinite opposition. When the clump of 
 trees round Gurthnamuckla rose into view, Charlotte nad 
 determined her order of battle, and was free to give her 
 attention to outward circumstances. It was a long time 
 since she had been out to Miss Duffy's farm, and as the 
 stony country began to open its arms to the rich, sweet 
 pastures, an often repressed desire asserted itself, and 
 Charlotte heaved a sigh that was as romantic in its way as if 
 she had been sweet and twenty, instead of tough and forty. 
 
The Real Charlotte. 67 
 
 Julia Duffy did not come out to meet her visitor, and 
 when Charl6tte walked into the kitchen, she found that the 
 mistress of the house was absent, and that three old women 
 were squatted on the floor in front of the fire, smoking short 
 clay pipes, and holding converse in Irish that was punctuated 
 with loud sniffs and coughs. At sight of the visitor the 
 pipes vanished in the twinkling of an eye, and one of the 
 women scrambled to her feet. 
 
 " Why, Mary Holloran, what brings you here ? " said 
 Charlotte, recognising the woman who lived in the Rose- 
 mount gate lodge. 
 
 "It was a sore leg I have, yer honour, miss," whined 
 Mary Holloran; "it's running with me now these three- 
 weeks, and I come to thry would Miss Duffy give me a bit 
 o' a plashther." 
 
 "Take care it doesn't run away with you altogether," 
 replied Charlotte facetiously; "and where's Miss Duffy 
 herself? " 
 
 " She's sick, the craythure," said one of the other women, 
 who, having found and dusted a chair, now offered it to 
 Miss Mullen ; " she have a wakeness like in her head, and 
 an impression on her heart, and Billy Grainy came afther 
 Peggy Roche here, the way she'd mind her." 
 
 Peggy Roche groaned slightly, and stirred a pot of smutty 
 gruel with an air of authority. 
 
 " Could I see her, d'ye think ? " asked Charlotte, sitting 
 down and looking about her with sharp appreciation of the 
 substantial excellence of the smoke-blackened walls and 
 grimy woodwork. " There wouldn't be a better kitchen in 
 the country," she thought, " if it was properly done up." 
 
 " Ye can, asthore, ye can go up," replied Peggy Roche, 
 " but wait a while till I have the sup o'' grool hated, and 
 maybe yerselfll take it up to herself." 
 
 " Is she eating nothing but that ? " asked Charlotte, view- 
 ing the pasty compound with disgust. 
 
 " Faith, 'tis hardly she'll ate that itself." Peggy Roche ; 
 rose as she spoke, and, going to the dresser, returned with a 
 black bottle. " As for a bit o' bread, or a pratie, or the like 
 o' that, she couldn't use it, nor let it past her shest ; with 
 respects to ye, as soon as she'd have it shwallied it'd come 
 up as simple and as pleashant as it wint down." She lifted 
 
68 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 the little three-legged pot off its heap of hot embers, and 
 then took the cork out of the black bottle with nimble, 
 dirty ringers. 
 
 " What in the name of goodness is that ye have there ? " 
 demanded Charlotte hastily. 
 
 Mrs. Roche looked somewhat confused, and murmured 
 something about " a weeshy suppeen o" shperits to wet the 
 grool." 
 
 Charlotte snatched the bottle from her, and smelt it. 
 
 " Faugh ! " she said, with a guttural at the end of the 
 word that no Saxon gullet could hope to produce ; " it's 
 potheen ! that's what it is, and mighty bad potheen too. 
 D'ye want to poison the woman ? " 
 
 A loud chorus of repudiation arose from the sick-nurse 
 and her friends. 
 
 " As for you, Peggy Roche, you're not fit to tend a pig, 
 let alone a Christian. You'd murder this poor woman with 
 your filthy fresh potheen, and when your own son was dying, 
 you begrudged him the drop of spirits that'd have kept the 
 life in him." 
 
 Peggy flung up her arms with a protesting howl 
 
 " May God forgive ye that word, Miss Charlotte ! II 
 'twas the blood of me arrm, I didn't begridge it to him ; the 
 Lord have mercy on him " 
 
 " Amen ! amen ! You would not, asthore," groaned the 
 other women. 
 
 " but doesn't the world know its mortial sin for a poor 
 craythur to go into th' other world with the smell of dhrink 
 on his breath ! " 
 
 " It's mortal sin to be a fool," replied Miss Mullen, whose 
 medical skill had often been baffled by such winds of 
 doctrine ; " here, give me the gruel. I'll go give it to the 
 woman before you have her murdered." She deftly emptied 
 the pot of gruel into a bowl, and, taking the spoon out of 
 the old woman's hand, she started on her errand of mercy. 
 
 The stairs were just outside the door, and making their 
 dark and perilous ascent in safety, she stood still in a low 
 passage into which two or three other doors opened. She 
 knocked at the first of these, and, receiving no answer, 
 turned the handle quietly and looked in. There was no 
 furniture in it except a broken wooden bedstead ; innumer- 
 
The Real Charlotte. 69 
 
 able flies buzzed on the closed window, and in the slant of 
 sunlight that fell through the dim panes was a box from 
 which a turkey reared its red throat, and regarded her with 
 a suspicion born, like her chickens, of long hatching. 
 Charlotte closed the door and noiselessly opened the next. 
 There was nothing in the room, which was of the ordinary 
 low-ceiled cottage type, and after a calculating look at the 
 broken flooring and the tattered wall-paper, she went quietly 
 out into the passage again. " Good servants' room," she 
 said to herself, " but if she's here much longer it'll be past 
 praying for." 
 
 If she had been in any doubt as to Miss Duffy's where- 
 abouts, a voice from the room at the end of the little 
 passage now settled the matter. " Is that Peggy ? " it 
 called. 
 
 Charlotte pushed boldly into the room with the bowl of 
 gruel. 
 
 " No, Miss Duffy, me poor old friend, it's me, Charlotte 
 Mullen," she said in her most cordial voice ; " they told me 
 below you were ill, but I thought you'd see me, and I 
 brought your gruel up in my hand. I hope you'll like it 
 none the less for that ! " 
 
 The invalid turned her night-capped head round from the 
 wall and looked at her visitor with astonished, bloodshot 
 eyes. Her hatchety face was very yellow, her long nose was 
 rather red, and her black hair thrust itself out round the 
 soiled frill of her night-cap in dingy wisps. 
 
 " You're welcome, Miss Mullen," she said with a pitiable 
 attempt at dignity ; " won't you take a cheer ? " 
 
 "Not till I've seen you take this," replied Charlotte, 
 handing her the bowl of gruel with even broader bonhomie 
 than before. 
 
 Julia Duffy reluctantly sat up among her blankets, con- 
 scious almost to agony of the squalor of all her surroundings, 
 conscious even that the blankets were of the homespun, 
 madder-dyed flannel such as the poor people use, and tak- 
 ing the gruel, she began to eat it in silence. She tried to 
 prop herself in this emergency with the recollection that 
 Charlotte Mullen's grandfather drank her grandfather's port 
 wine under this very roof, and that it was by no fault of hers 
 that she had sunk while Charlotte had risen ; but the worn- 
 
70 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 out boots that lay on the floor where she had thrown them 
 off, and the rags stuffed into the broken panes in the window, 
 were facts that crowded out all consolation from bygone 
 glories. 
 
 " Well, Miss Duffy," said Charlotte, drawing up a chair 
 to the bedside, and looking at her hostess with a critical 
 eye, " I'm sorry to see you so sick ; when Billy Grainy left 
 the milk last night he told Norry you were laid up in bed, 
 and I thought I'd come over and see if there was anything I 
 could do for you." 
 
 " Thank ye. Miss Mullen," replied Julia stiffly, sipping 
 the nauseous gruel with ladylike decorum, " I have all I 
 require here." 
 
 " Well, ye know, Miss Duffy, I wanted to see how you 
 are," said Charlotte, slightly varying her attack ; " I'm a bit 
 of a doctor, like yourself. Peggy Roche below told me you 
 had what she called 'an impression on the heart,' but it 
 looks to me more like a touch of liver." 
 
 The invalid does not exist who can resist a discussion of 
 symptoms, and Miss Duffy's hauteur slowly thawed before 
 Charlotte's intelligent and intimate questions. In a very 
 short time Miss Mullen had felt her pulse, inspected her 
 tongue, promised to send her a bottle of unfailing efficacy, 
 and delivered an exordium on the nature and treatment of 
 her complaint. 
 
 " But in deed and in truth," she wound up, " if you want 
 my opinion, I'll tell you frankly that what ails you is you're 
 just rotting away with the damp and loneliness of this place. 
 I declare that sometimes when I'm lying awake in my bed at 
 nights, I've thought of you out here by yourself, without an 
 earthly creature near you if you got sick, and wondered at 
 you. Why, my heavenly powers ! ye might die a hundred 
 deaths before anyone would know it ! " 
 
 Miss Duffy picked up a corner of the sheet and wiped the 
 gruel from her thin lips. 
 
 " If it comes to that, Miss Mullen/' she said with some 
 resumption of her earlier manner, " if I'm for dying I'd as 
 soon die by myself as in company ; and as for damp, I thank 
 God this house was built by them that didn't spare money 
 on it, and it's as dry this minyute as what it was forty years 
 ago." 
 
The Real Charlotte. 71 
 
 " What ! Do you tell me the roofs sound ? " exclaimed 
 Charlotte with genuine interest. 
 
 " I have never examined it, Miss Mullen," replied Julia 
 coldly, " but it keeps the rain out, and I consider that 
 suffeecient." 
 
 " Oh, I'm sure there's not a word to be said against the 
 house," Charlotte made hasty reparation \ " but, indeed, 
 Miss Duffy, I say and I've heard more than, myself say 
 the same thing that a delicate woman like you has no 
 business to live alone so far from help. The poor Arch- 
 deacon frets about it, I can tell ye. I believe he thinks 
 Father Heffernan'll be raking ye into his fold ! And I can 
 tell ye," concluded Charlotte, with what she felt to be a 
 certain rough pathos, " there's plenty in Lismoyle would be 
 sorry to see your father's daughter die with the wafer in her 
 mouth ! " 
 
 " I had no idea the people in Lismoyle were so anxious 
 about me and my affairs," said Miss Duffy. " They're very 
 kind, but I'm able to look afther my soul without their help." 
 " Well, of course, everyone's soul is their own affair ; but, 
 ye know, when no one ever sees ye in your own parish 
 church well, right or wrong, there are plenty of fools to 
 gab about it." 
 
 The dark bags of skin under Julia Duffy's eyes became 
 slowly red, a signal that this thrust had gone home. She 
 did not answer, and her visitor rose, and moving towards 
 the hermetically sealed window, looked out across the lawn 
 over Julia's domain. Her roundest and weightiest stone 
 was still in her sling, while her eye ran over the grazing 
 cattle in the fields. 
 
 " Is it true what I hear, that Peter Joyce has your grazing 
 this year ? " she said casually. 
 
 " It is quite true," answered Miss Duffy, a little defiantly. 
 A liver attack does not pre-dispose its victims to answer in 
 a Christian spirit questions that are felt to be impertinent 
 
 "Well," returned Charlotte, still looking out of the 
 window, with her hands deep in the pockets of her black 
 alpaca coat, " I'm sorry for it." 
 " Why so ? " 
 
 Julia's voice had a sharpness that was pleasant to Miss 
 Mullen's ear. 
 
72 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 " I can't well explain the matter to ye now," Charlotte 
 said, turning round and looking portentously upon the sick 
 woman, " but I have it from a sure hand that Peter Joyce is 
 bankrupt, and will be in the courts before the year is out." 
 
 When, a short time afterwards, Julia Duffy lay back 
 among her madder blankets and heard the last sound of 
 Miss Mullen's phaeton wheels die away along the lake road, 
 she felt that the visit had at least provided her with subject 
 for meditation. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 MR. RODERICK LAMBERT'S study window gave upon the 
 flower garden, and consequently the high road also came 
 within the sphere of his observations. He had been sitting 
 at his writing-table, since luncheon-time, dealing with a 
 variety of business, and seldom lifting his glossy black head 
 except when some sound in the road attracted his attention. 
 It was not his custom to work after a solid luncheon on a 
 close afternoon, nor was it by any means becoming to his 
 complexion when he did so; but the second post had 
 brought letters of an unpleasant character that required 
 immediate attention, and the flush on his face was not 
 wholly due to hot beef-steak pie and sherry. It was not 
 only that several of Sir Benjamin's tenants had attended a 
 Land League meeting the Sunday before, and that their 
 religious director had written to inform him that they had 
 there pledged themselves to the Plan of Campaign. That 
 was annoying, but as the May rents were in he had no 
 objection to their amusing themselves as they pleased during 
 the summer ; in fact, from a point of view on which Mr. 
 Lambert dwelt as little as possible even in his own mind, 
 a certain amount of nominal disturbance among the tenants 
 might not come amiss. The thing that was really vexing 
 was the crass obstinacy of his wife's trustees, who had 
 acquainted him with the fact that they were unable to 
 comply with her wish that some of her capital should be 
 sold out. 
 
 It is probably hardly necessary to say that the worthy 
 turkey hen had expressed no such desire. A feeble, " to be 
 sure, Roderick dear ; I daresay it'd be the best thing to do ; 
 
The Real Charlotte. 73 
 
 but you know I don't understand such things," had been 
 her share of the transaction, and Mr. Lambert knew that 
 the refusal of her trustees to make the desired concession 
 would not ruffle so much as a feather ; but he wished he 
 could be as sure of the equanimity of his coachbuilder, one 
 of whose numerous demands for payment was lying upon 
 the table in front of him ; while others, dating back five 
 years to the period of his marriage, lurked in the pigeon- 
 holes of his writing-table. 
 
 Mr. Lambert, like other young gentlemen of fashion, but 
 not of fortune, had thought that when he married a well-to- 
 do widow, he ought to prove his power of adjusting himself 
 to circumstances by expending her ready money in as dis- 
 tinguished a manner as possible. The end of the ready 
 money had come in an absurdly short time, and, paradoxical 
 as it may seem, it had during its brief life raised a flourish- 
 ing following of bills which had in the past spring given Mr. 
 Lambert far more trouble than he felt them to be worth, 
 and though he had stopped the mouths of some of the more 
 rapacious of his creditors, he had done so with extreme 
 difficulty and at a cost that made him tremble. It was 
 especially provoking that the coachbuilder should have 
 threatened legal proceedings about that bill just now, when, 
 in addition to other complications, he happened to have 
 lost more money at the Galway races than he cared to think 
 about, certainly more than he wished his wife and her rela- 
 tions to know of. 
 
 Early in the afternoon he had, with an unregarding eye, 
 seen Charlotte drive by on her way to Gurthnamuckla ; but 
 after a couple of hours of gloomy calculation and letter- 
 writing, the realisation that Miss Mullen was not at her 
 house awoke in him, coupled with the idea that a little fresh 
 air would do him good. He went out of the house, some 
 unconfessed purpose quickening his step. He hesitated at 
 the gate while it expanded into determination, and then he 
 hailed his wife, whose poppy-decked garden-hat was pain- 
 fully visible above the magenta blossoms of a rhododendron 
 bush. 
 
 " Lucy ! I wouldn't be surprised if I fetched Francie 
 Fitzpatrick over for tea. She's by herself at Tally Ho. I 
 saw Charlotte drive by without her a little while ago." 
 
74 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 When he reached Tally Ho he found the gate open, an 
 offence always visited with extremest penalties by Miss 
 Mullen, and as he walked up the drive he noticed that, be- 
 sides the broad wheel-tracks of the phaeton, there were 
 several thin and devious ones, at some places interrupted 
 by footmarks and a general appearance of a scuffle; at 
 another heading into a lilac bush with apparent precipi- 
 tancy, and at the hall-door circling endlessly and crookedly 
 with several excursions on to the newly -mown plot of 
 grass. 
 
 " I wonder what perambulator has been running amuck 
 in here ? Charlotte will make it hot for them, whoever they 
 were," thought Lambert, as he stood waiting for the door to 
 be opened, and watched through the glass of the porch-door 
 two sleek tortoise-shell cats lapping a saucer of yellow cream 
 in a corner of the hall. " By Jove ! how snug she is in this 
 little place. She must have a pot of money put by ; more 
 than she'd ever own up to, I'll engage ! " 
 
 At this juncture the door opened, and he was confronted 
 by Norry the Boat, with sleeves rolled above her brown 
 "elbows, and stockinged feet untrammelled by boots. 
 
 " There's noan of them within," she announced before 
 he had time to speak. " Miss Charlotte's gone dhriving to 
 Gurthnamuckla, and Miss Francie went out a while ago." 
 
 " Which way did she go, d'ye know ? " 
 
 " Musha, faith ! I do not know what way did she go," 
 replied Norry, her usual asperity heightened by a recent 
 chase of Susan, who had fled to the roof of the turf-house 
 with a mackerel snatched from the kitchen-table. " I have 
 plinty to do besides running afther her. I heard her 
 spakin' to one outside in the avenue, and with that she 
 clapped the hall-doore afther her and she didn't come in 
 since." 
 
 Lambert thought it wiser not to venture on the suggestion 
 that Louisa might be better informed, and walked away 
 down the avenue trying hard not to admit to himself his 
 disappointment. 
 
 He turned towards home again in an objectless way, 
 thoroughly thwarted, and dismally conscious that the after- 
 noon contained for him only the prospect of having tea with 
 his wife and finishing his letters afterwards. His step be- 
 
The Real Charlotte. 75 
 
 came slower and slower as he approached his own entrance 
 gates, and he looked at his watch. 
 
 " Confound it ! it's only half-past four. I can't go in 
 yet;" then, a new idea striking him, "perhaps she went out 
 to meet Charlotte. I declare I might as well go a bit 
 down the road and see if they're coming back yet." 
 
 He walked for at least half a mile under the trees, whose 
 young June leaves had already a dissipated powdering of 
 white limestone dust, without meeting anything except a 
 donkey with a pair of creaking panniers on its back, walking 
 alone and discreetly at its own side of the road, as well 
 aware as Mr. Lambert that its owner was dallying with a 
 quart of porter at a roadside public house a mile away. 
 The turn to Gurthnamuckla was not far off when the distant 
 rumble of wheels became at last audible; Lambert had 
 only time to remember angrily that, as the Tally Ho 
 phaeton had but two seats, he had had his walk for nothing, 
 when the bowed haad and long melancholy face of the 
 black horse came in sight, and he became aware that Char- 
 lotte was without a companion. 
 
 Her face had more colour in it than usual as she pulled 
 up beside him, perhaps from the heat of the afternoon and 
 the no small exertion of flogging her steed, and her manner 
 when she spoke was neither bluff nor hearty, but approxi- 
 mated more nearly to that of ordinary womankind than was 
 its wont. Mr. Lambert noticed none of these things ; and, 
 being a person whose breeding was not always equal to 
 annoying emergencies, he did not trouble himself to take 
 off his hat or smile appropriately as Charlotte said 
 
 "Well, Roddy, I'd as soon expect to see your two 
 horses sitting in the dog-cart driving you as to see you as 
 far from home as this on your own legs. Where are you 
 off to?" 
 
 " I was taking a stroll out to meet you, and ask you to 
 come back and have tea with Lucy," replied Mr. Lambert, 
 recognising the decree of fate with a singularly bad grace. 
 " I went down to Tally Ho to ask you, and Norry told me 
 you had gone to Gurthnamuckla." 
 
 " Did you see Francie there ? " said Charlotte quickly. 
 
 " No ; I believe she was out somewhere." 
 
 " Well, you were a very good man to take so much trouble 
 
76 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 about us," she replied, looking at him with an expression 
 that softened the lines of her face in a surprising way. "Are 
 you too proud to have a lift home now ? " 
 
 " Thank you, I'd sooner walk and " casting about for 
 an excuse " you mightn't like the smell of my cigar under 
 your nose." 
 
 " Come, now, Roddy," exclaimed Charlotte, " you ought 
 to know me better than that ! Don't you remember how 
 you used to sit smoking beside me in the office when I was 
 helping you to do your work ? In fact, I wouldn't say that 
 there hadn't been an occasion when I was guilty of a 
 cigarette in your company myself ! " 
 
 She turned her eyes towards him, and the provocative 
 look in them came as instinctively and as straight as ever it 
 did from Francie's, or as ever it has been projected from 
 the curbed heart of woman. But, unfair as it may be, it is 
 certain that if Lambert had seen it, he would not have been 
 attracted by it. He, however, did not look up. 
 
 " Well, if you don't mind going slow, I'll walk beside 
 you," he said, ignoring the reminiscence. " I want to know 
 whether you did better business with Julia Duffy than I did 
 last week." 
 
 The soft look was gone in a moment from Charlotte's face, 
 
 "I couldn't get much satisfaction out of her," she re- 
 plied ; " but I think I left a thorn in her pillow when I told 
 her Peter Joyce was bankrupt." 
 
 " I'll take my oath you did," said Lambert, with a short 
 laugh. " I declare I'd be sorry for the poor old devil if she 
 wasn't such a bad tenant, letting the whole place go to the 
 mischief, house and all." 
 
 " I tell you the house isn't in such a bad way as you 
 think ; it's dirt ails it more than anything else." Charlotte 
 had recovered her wonted energy of utterance. " Believe 
 me, if I had a few workmen in that house for a month you 
 wouldn't know it." 
 
 " Well, I believe you will, sooner or later. All the same, 
 I can't see what the deuce you want with it. Now, if / had 
 the place, I'd make a pot of money out of it, keeping young 
 horses there, as I've often told you. I'd do a bit of coping, 
 and making hunters to sell. There's no work on earth I'd 
 like as well." 
 
The Real Charlotte. 77 
 
 He took a long pull at his cigar, and expelled a sigh and 
 a puff of smoke. 
 
 " Well, Roddy/' said Charlotte, after a moment's pause, 
 speaking with an unusual slowness and almost hesitancy, 
 11 you know I wouldn't like to come between you and your 
 fancy. If you want the farm, in God's name take it your- 
 self ! " 
 
 "Take it myself! I haven't the money to pay the fine, 
 much less to stock it. I tell you what, Charlotte," he went 
 on, turning round and putting his hand on the splash-board 
 of the phaeton as he walked, " you and I are old pals, and 
 I don't mind telling you it's the most I can do to keep going 
 the way I am now. I never was so driven for money in my 
 life," he ended, some vague purpose, added to the habit of 
 an earlier part of his life, pushing him on to be confi- 
 dential. 
 
 " Who's driving you, Roddy ? " said Charlotte, in a voice 
 in which a less preoccupied person than her companion 
 might have noticed a curiously gentle inflection. 
 
 It is perhaps noteworthy that while Mr. Lambert's lips 
 replied with heartfelt irritation, " Oh, they're all at me, 
 Langford the coachbuilder, and everyone of them," one 
 section of his brain was asking the other how much ready 
 money old Mrs. Mullen had had to leave, and was receiving 
 a satisfactory answer. 
 
 There was a pause in the conversation. It was so long 
 now since the black horse had felt the whip, that, acting on 
 the presumption that his mistress had fallen asleep, he 
 fell into an even more slumbrous crawl without any notice 
 being taken. 
 
 " Roddy," said Charlotte at last, and Lambert now 
 observed how low and rough her voice was, " do you re- 
 member in old times once or twice, when you were put to 
 it for a five-pound note, you made no bones about asking a 
 friend to help you ? Well, you know I'm a poor woman" 
 even at this moment Charlotte's caution asserted itself 
 " but I daresay I could put my hand on a couple of 
 hundred, and if they'd be any use to you " 
 
 Lambert became very red. The possibility of some such 
 a climax as this had floated in a sub-current of thought just 
 below the level of formed ideas, but now that it had come, 
 
78 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 it startled him. It was an unheard-of thing that Charlotte 
 should make such an offer as this. It gave him suddenly a 
 tingling sense of power, and at the same time a strange 
 instinct of disgust and shame. 
 
 " Oh, my dear Charlotte," he began awkwardly, " upon 
 my soul you're a great deal too good. I never thought of 
 such a thing I I " he stammered, wishing he could 
 refuse, but casting about fo/ words in which to accept. 
 
 "Ah, nonsense. Now, Roddy, me dear boy," interrupted 
 Charlotte, regaining her usual manner as she saw his em- 
 barrassment, " say no more about it. We'll consider it a 
 settled thing, and we'll go through the base business details 
 after tea." 
 
 Lambert said to himself that there was really no way out 
 of it. If she was so determined the only thing was to let 
 her do as she liked ; no one could say that the affair was of 
 his seeking. 
 
 " And, you know," continued Charlotte in her most 
 jocular voice, before he could frame a sentence of the right 
 sort, " who knows, if I get the farm, that we mightn't make 
 a joint-stock business out of it, and have young horses there, 
 and all the rest of it ! " 
 
 " You're awfully good, Charlotte," said Lambert, with an 
 emotion in his voice that she did not guess to be purely the 
 result of inward relief and exultation ; " I'm awfully obliged 
 to you you always were a a true friend some day, per- 
 haps, I'll be able to show you what I think about it," he 
 stammered, unable to think of anything else to say, and, 
 lifting his hand from the splash-board, he put it on hers, 
 that lay in her lap with the reins in it, and pressed it for a 
 moment. Into both their minds shot simultaneously the 
 remembrance of a somewhat similar scene, when, long ago, 
 Charlotte had come to the help of her father's pupil, and he 
 had expressed his gratitude in a more ardent manner a 
 manner that had seemed cheap enough to him at the time, 
 but that had been more costly to Charlotte than any other 
 thing that had ever befallen her. 
 
 " You haven't forgotten old times any more than I have/' 
 he went on, knowing very well that he was taking now much 
 the same simple and tempting method of getting rid of his 
 obligation that he had once found so efficacious, and to a 
 
The Real Charlotte. 79 
 
 certain extent enjoying the thought that he could still make 
 a fool of her. " Ah, well ! " he sighed, " there's no use try- 
 ing to get those times back, any more than there is in trying 
 to forget them." He hesitated. "But, after all, there's 
 many a new tune played on an old fiddle ! Isn't that so ? " 
 He was almost frightened at his own daring as he saw 
 Charlotte's cheek burn with a furious red, and her lips 
 quiver in the attempt to answer. 
 
 Upon their silence there broke from the distance a loud 
 scream, then another, and then a burst of laughter in a duet 
 of soprano and bass, coming apparently from a lane that 
 led into the road a little further on a smooth and secluded 
 little lane, bordered thickly with hazel bushes a private 
 road, in fact, to a model farm that Mr. Lambert had estab- 
 lished on his employer's property. From the mouth of this 
 there broke suddenly a whirling vision of whiteness and 
 wheels, and Miss Fitzpatrick, mounted on a tricycle and 
 shrieking loudly, dashed across the high road and collapsed 
 in a heap in the ditch. Lambert started forward, but long 
 before he could reach her the Rev. Joseph Corkran emerged 
 at full speed from the lane, hatless, with long flying coat- 
 tails, and, with a skill born of experience, extricated Francie 
 from her difficulties. 
 
 " Oh, I'm dead ! " she panted. " Oh, the horrible thing 1 
 What good were you that you let it go ? " unworthily attack- 
 ing the equally exhausted Corkran. Then, in tones of con- 
 sternation, " Goodness ! Look at Mr. Lambert and 
 Charlotte ! Oh, Mr. Lambert," as Lambert came up to 
 her, "did you see the toss I got? The dirty thing ran 
 away with me down the hill, and Mr. Corkran was so tired 
 running he had to let go, and I declare I thought I was 
 killed and you don't look a bit sorry for me ! " 
 
 " Well, what business had you to get up on a thing like 
 that?" answered Lambert, looking angrily at the curate. 
 " I wonder, Corkran, you hadn't more sense than to let a 
 lady ride that machine." 
 
 " Well, indeed, Mr. Lambert, I told Miss Fitzpatrick it 
 wasn't as easy as she thought," replied the guilty Corkran, a 
 callow youth from Trinity College, Dublin, who had been 
 as wax in Francie's hands, and who now saw, with unfeigned 
 terror, the approach of Charlotte. " I begged of her not to 
 
80 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 go outside Tally Ho, but but I think I'd better go back 
 and look for my hat " he ended abruptly, retreating into 
 the lane just as Charlotte drew up the black horse and 
 opened her mouth to deliver herself of her indignation. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE broad limestone steps at Bruff looked across the lawn 
 to the lake, and to the south. They were flanked on either 
 hand by stone balustrades which began and ended in a pot 
 of blazing scarlet geraniums, and on their topmost plateau 
 on this brilliant ist of July, the four Bruff dogs sat on their 
 haunches and gazed with anxious despondency in at the 
 open hall-door. For the last half-hour Max and Dinah, the 
 indoor dogs, had known that an expedition was toward. 
 They had seen Pamela put on a hat that certainly was not 
 her garden one, and as certainly lacked the veil that be- 
 tokened the abhorred ceremony of church-going. They 
 knew this hat well, and at the worst it usually meant a choir 
 practice ; but taken in connection with a blue serge 
 skirt and the packing of a luncheon basket, they almost 
 ventured to hope it portended a picnic on the lake. They 
 adored picnics. In the first place, the outdoor dogs were 
 always left at home, which alone would have imparted a 
 delicious flavour to any entertainment, and in the second, 
 all dietary rules were remitted for the occasion, and they 
 were permitted to raven unchecked upon chicken bones, fat 
 slices of ham, and luscious leavings of cream when the pack- 
 ing-up time came. There was, however, mingled with this 
 enchanting prospect, the fear that they might be left behind, 
 and from the sounding of the first note of preparation they 
 had never let Pamela out of their sight. Whenever her 
 step was heard through the long passages, there had gone 
 with it the scurrying gallop of the two little waiters on pro- 
 vidence, and when her arrangements had culminated in the 
 luncheon basket, their agitation had become so poignant 
 that a growling game of play under the table, got up merely 
 to pass the time, turned into an acrimonious squabble, and 
 caused their ejection to the hall-door steps by Lady Dysart. 
 Now, sitting outside the door, they listened with trembling 
 
The Real Charlotte. 81 
 
 to the discussion that was going on in the hall, and with the 
 self-consciousness of dogs, were convinced that it was all 
 about themselves. 
 
 "No, I cannot allow Garry to go," exclaimed Lady 
 Dysart, her eyes raised to the ceiling as if to show her 
 remoteness from all human entreaty ; " he is not over the 
 whooping-cough; I heard him whooping this morning in 
 his bedroom." 
 
 The person mentioned ceased from a game of fives with 
 a tennis-ball that threatened momentarily to break the 
 windows, and said indignantly, " Oh, I say, mother, that 
 was only the men in the yard pumping. That old pump 
 makes a row just like whooping-cough." 
 
 Lady Dysart faltered for a moment before this ingenious 
 falsehood, but soon recovered herself. 
 
 " I don't care whether it was you or the pump that 
 whooped, it does not alter the fact of your superfluity at a 
 picnic." 
 
 " I think Captain Cursiter and Mr. Hawkins wanted him 
 to stoke," said Pamela from the luncheon basket. 
 
 " I have no doubt they do, but they shall not have him," 
 said Lady Dysart with the blandness of entire decision, 
 though her eyes wavered from her daughter's face to her 
 son's ; " they're very glad indeed to save their own clothes 
 and spoil his." 
 
 " Well, then, I'll go with Lambert," said Garry rebelliously. 
 
 " You will do nothing of the sort ! " exclaimed Lady 
 Dysart, " whatever I may do about allowing you to go with 
 Captain Cursiter, nothing shall induce me to sanction any 
 plan that involves your going in that most dangerous yacht. 
 Christopher himself says she is over-sparred." Lady Dysart 
 had no idea of the meaning of the accusation, but she felt 
 the term to be good and telling. " Now, Pamela, will you 
 promise me to stay with Captain Cursiter all the time ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, I will," said Pamela, laughing ; " but you know 
 in your heart that he would much rather have Garry." 
 
 " I don't care what my heart knows," replied Lady Dysart 
 magnificently, " I know what my mouth says, arid that is 
 that you must neither of you stir out of the steam-launch." 
 
 At this descent of his mother into the pit so artfully 
 dug for her, Garry withdrew to attire himself for the 
 
 F 
 
82 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 position of stoker, and Pamela discreetly changed the 
 conversation. 
 
 It seemed a long time to Max and Dinah before their 
 fate was decided, but after some last moments of anguish on 
 the pier they found themselves, the one coiled determinedly 
 on Pamela's lap, and the other smirking in the bow in 
 Garry's arms, as Mr. Hawkins sculled the second relay of 
 the Bruff party out to the launch. The first relay, consist- 
 ing of Christopher and Miss Hope-Drummond, was already 
 on its way down the lake in Mr. Lambert's 5-ton boat, with 
 every inch of canvas set to catch the light and shifty breeze 
 that blew petulantly down from the mountains, and ruffled 
 the glitter of the lake with dark blue smears. The air 
 quivered hotly over the great stones on the shore, drawing 
 out the strong aromatic smell of the damp weeds and the 
 bog-myrtle, and Lady Dysart stood on the end of the pier, 
 and wrung her hands as she thought of Pamela's com- 
 plexion. 
 
 Captain Cursiter was one of the anomalous soldiers whose 
 happiness it is to spend as much time as possible in a boat, 
 dressed in disreputable clothes, with hands begrimed and 
 blistered with oil or ropes as the case may be, and steaming 
 or sailing to nowhere and back again with undying en- 
 thusiasm. He was a thin, brown man, with a moustache 
 rather lighter in colour than the tan of his face, and his 
 beaky nose, combined with his disposition to flee from the 
 haunts of men, had inspired his friends to bestow on him 
 the pet name of " Snipey." The festivity on which he was 
 at present embarked was none of his seeking, and it had 
 been only by strenuous argument, fortified by the artful 
 suggestion that no one else was really competent to work 
 the boat, that Mr. Hawkins had got him into clean flannels 
 and the conduct of the expedition. He knew neither Miss 
 Mullen nor Francie, and his acquaintance with the Dysarts, 
 as with other dwellers in the neighbourhood, was of a slight 
 and unprogressive character, and in strong contrast to the 
 manner in which Mr. Hawkins had become at Bruff and 
 elsewhere what that young gentleman was pleased to term 
 "the gated infant." During the run from Lismoyle to 
 Bruff he had been able to occupy himself with the affairs of 
 the steam-launch ; but when Hawkins, his prop and stay, 
 
The Real Charlotte. 83 
 
 had rowed ashore for the Dys^rt party, the iron had entered 
 into his soul. 
 
 As the punt neared the launch, Mr. Hawkins looked 
 round to take his distance in bringing her alongside, and re- 
 cognised with one delighted glance the set smile of suffering 
 politeness that denoted that Captain Cursiter was making 
 himself agreeable to the ladies. Charlotte was sitting in 
 the stern with a depressing air of Sunday-outness about her, 
 and a stout umbrella over her head. It was not in her 
 nature to feel shy ; the grain of it was too coarse and strong 
 to harbour such a thing as diffidence, but she knew well 
 enough when she was socially unsuccessful, and she was al- 
 ready aware that she was going to be out of her element on 
 this expedition. Lambert, who would have been a kind of 
 connecting link, was already far in the offing. Captain 
 Cursiter she mentally characterised as a poor stick. 
 Hawkins, whom she had begun by liking, was daily al- 
 most hourly gaining in her disfavour, and from neither 
 Pamela, Francie, or Garry did she expect much entertain- 
 ment. Charlotte had a vigorous taste in conversation, and 
 her idea of a pleasure party was not to talk to Pamela 
 Dysart about the choir and the machinery of a school feast 
 for an hour and a half, and from time to time to repulse 
 with ill-assumed politeness the bird-like flights of Dinah on 
 to her lap. Francie and Mr. Hawkins sat forward on the 
 roof of the little cabin, and apparently entertained one 
 another vastly, judging by their appearance and the frag- 
 ments of conversation that from time to time made their 
 way aft in the environment of a cloud of smuts. Captain 
 Cursiter, revelling in the well-known restrictions that en- 
 compass the man at the wheel, stood serenely aloof, steering 
 among the hump-backed green islands and treacherous 
 shallows, and thinking to himself that Hawkins was going 
 ahead pretty fast with that Dublin girl. 
 
 Mr. Hawkins had been for some time a source of anxiety 
 to his brother officers, who disapproved, of matrimony for 
 the young of their regiment. Things had looked so serious 
 when he was quartered at Limerick that he had been hur- 
 riedly sent on detachment to Lismoyle before he had time 
 to " make an example of himself," as one of the most un- 
 married of the majors observed, and into Captain Cursiter's 
 
84 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 trusted hands he had been committed, with urgent instruc- 
 tions to keep an eye on him. Cursiter's eye was renowned 
 for its blighting qualities on occasions such as these, and 
 his jibes at matrimony were looked on by his brother 
 officers as the most finished and scathing expressions of 
 proper feeling on the subject that could be desired ; but it 
 was agreed that he would have his hands full. 
 
 The launch slid smoothly along with a low clicking of the 
 machinery, cutting her way across the reflections of the 
 mountains in pursuit of the tall, white sail of the Daphne^ 
 that seemed each moment to grow taller, as the yacht was 
 steadily overhauled by her more practical comrade. The 
 lake was narrower here, where it neared the end of its 
 twenty-mile span, and so calm that the sheep and cattle 
 grazing on the brown mountains were reflected in its depths, 
 and the yacht seemed as incongruous in the midst of them as 
 the ark on Mount Ararat. The last bend of the lake was 
 before them ; the Daphne crept round it, moved mysteriously 
 by a wind that was imperceptible to the baking company on 
 the steam-launch, and by the time the latter had churned her 
 way round the fir-clad point, the yacht was letting go her 
 anchor near the landing-place of a large wooded island. 
 
 At a picnic nothing is of much account before luncheon, 
 and the gloom of hunger hung like a pall over the party 
 that took ashore luncheon baskets, unpacked knives and 
 forks, and gathered stones to put on the corners of the 
 table-cloth. But such a hunger is Nature's salve for the in- 
 adequacy of human beings to amuse themselves ; the body 
 comes to the relief of the mind with the compassionate 
 superiority of a good servant, and confers inward festivity upon 
 many a dull dinner party. Max and Dinah were quite of 
 this opinion. They had behaved with commendable fortitude 
 during the voyage, though in the earlier part of it a shudder- 
 ing dejection on Max's part had seemed to Pamela's trained 
 eye to forebode sea-sickness, but at the lifting of the luncheon 
 basket into the punt their self-control deserted them. The 
 succulent trail left upon the air, palpable to the dog-nose as 
 the smoke of the steam-launch to the human eye, beguiled 
 them into efforts to follow, which were only suppressed by 
 their being secretly immured in the cabin by Garry. No 
 one but he saw the two wan faces that yearned at the tiny 
 
The Real Charlotte. 85 
 
 cabin windows, as the last punt load left for the land, and 
 when at last the wails of the captives streamed across the 
 water, anyone but Garry would have repented of the 
 cruelty. The dogs will never forget it to Captain Cur- 
 siter that it was he who rowed out to the launch and 
 brought them ashore to enjoy their fair share of the picnic, 
 and their gratitude will never be tempered by the knowledge 
 that he had caught at the excuse to escape from the con- 
 versation which Miss Hope-Drummond, notwithstanding 
 even the pangs of hunger, was proffering to him. 
 
 There is something unavoidably vulgar in the aspect of 
 a picnic party when engaged in the culminating rite of 
 eating on the grass. They may feel themselves to be 
 picturesque, gipsy-like, even romantic, but to the unpar- 
 ticipating looker-on, not even the gilded dignity of cham- 
 pagne can redeem them from being a mere group of greedy, 
 huddled backs, with ugly trimmings of paper, dirty plates, 
 and empty bottles. But at Innishochery the only passers-by 
 were straight-flying wild-duck or wood-pigeons, or an occa- 
 sional sea-gull lounging up from the distant Atlantic, all 
 observant enough in their way, but not critical. It is 
 probable they did not notice even the singular ungraceful- 
 ness of Miss Mullen's attitude, as she sat with her short 
 legs uncomfortably tucked away, and her large jaws moving 
 steadily as she indemnified herself for the stupidity of the 
 recent trip. The champagne at length had its usual 
 beneficent effect upon the conversation. Charlotte began 
 to tell stories about her cats and her servants to Christopher 
 and Pamela, with admirable dramatic effect and a sense of 
 humour that made her almost attractive. Miss Hope- 
 Drummond had discovered that Cursiter was one of the 
 Lincolnshire Cursiters, and, with mutual friends as stepping- 
 stones, was working her way on with much ability; and 
 Francie was sitting on a mossy rock, a little away from the 
 table-cloth, with a plate of cherry-pie on her lap, Mr. 
 Hawkins at her feet, and unlimited opportunities for 
 practical jestings with the cherry-stones. Garry and the 
 dogs were engaged in scraping out dishes and polishing 
 plates in a silence more eloquent than words ; Lambert 
 aione, of all the party, remained impervious to the influences 
 of luncheon, and lay on his side with his eyes moodily 
 
86 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 fixed upon his plate, only responding to Miss Mullen's 
 frequent references to him by a sarcastic grunt. 
 
 " Now I assure you, Miss Dysart, it's perfectly true," said 
 Charlotte, after one of these polite rejoinders. " He's too 
 lazy to say so, but he knows right well that when I com- 
 plained of my kitchen-maid to her mother, all the good I 
 got from her was that she said, ' Would ye be agin havin' a 
 switch and to be switchin' her ! ' That was a pretty way 
 for me to spend my valuable time." Her audience laughed; 
 and inspired by another half glass of champagne, Miss 
 Mullen continued, " But big a fool as Bid Sal is, she's a 
 Solon beside Donovan. He came to me th' other day and 
 said he wanted ' little Johanna for the garden.' * Little 
 who ? ' says I ; ' Little Johanna,' says he. c Ye great, lazy 
 fool,' says I, ' aren't ye big enough and ugly enough to do 
 that little pick of work by yerself without wanting a girl to 
 help ye ? ' And after all," said Charlotte, dropping from 
 the tones of fury in which she had rendered her own part 
 in the interview, " all he wanted was some guano for my 
 early potatoes ! " 
 
 Lambert got up without a smile, and sauntering down to 
 the lake, sat down on a rock and began to smoke a cigar. 
 He could not laugh as Christopher and even Captain 
 Cursiter did, at Charlotte's dramatisation of her scene with 
 her gardener. At an earlier period of his career he had 
 found her conversation amusing, and he had not thought 
 her vulgar. Since then he had raised himself just high 
 enough from the sloughs of Irish middle-class society to see 
 its vulgarity, but he did not stand sufficiently apart from it 
 to be able to appreciate the humorous side, and in any 
 case he was at present little disposed to laugh at anything. 
 He sat and smoked morosely for some time, feeling that he 
 was making his dissatisfaction with the entertainment im- 
 posingly conspicuous ; but his cigar was a failure, the rock 
 was far from comfortable, and his bereaved friends seemed 
 to be enjoying themselves rather more than when he left 
 them. He threw the cigar into the water in front of him, 
 to the consternation of a number of minnows, who had hung 
 in the warm shallow as if listening, and now vanished in a 
 twinkling to spread among the dark resorts of the elder 
 fishes the tale of the thunderbolt that fell in their midst, 
 
The Real Charlotte. 87 
 
 while Lambert stalked back to the party under the 
 trees. 
 
 Its component parts were little altered, saving that Miss 
 Hope-Drummond had, by the ingenious erection of a 
 parasol, isolated herself and Christopher from the others, 
 and that Garry had joined himself to Francie and Hawkins, 
 and was, in company with the latter, engaged in weaving 
 stalks of grass across the insteps of Miss Fitzpatrick's open- 
 worked stockings. 
 
 " Just look at them, Mr. Lambert," Francie called out in 
 cheerful complaint. " They're having a race to see which 
 of them will finish their bit of grass first, and they won't let 
 me stir, though I'm nearly mad with the flies 1 " 
 
 She had a waving branch of mountain-ash in her hand ; 
 the big straw hat that she had trimmed for herself with dog- 
 roses the night before was on the back of her head ; her 
 hair clustered about her white temples, and the colour that 
 fighting the flies had brought to her face lent a lovely depth 
 to eyes that had the gaiety and the soullessness of a child. 
 Lambert had forgotten most of his classics since he had left 
 school, and it is probable that even had he remembered 
 them it would not have occurred to him to regard anything 
 in them as applicable to modern times. At all events 
 Francie's dryad-like fitness to her surroundings did not 
 strike him, as it struck another more dispassionate onlooker, 
 when an occasional lift of the Hope-Drummond parasol re- 
 vealed the white-clad figure, with its woody background, to 
 Christopher. 
 
 "It seems to me you're well able to take care of yourself," 
 was Lambert's reply to Miss Fitzpatrick's appeal. He 
 turned his back upon her, and interrupted Charlotte in the 
 middle of a story by asking her if she would walk with him 
 across the island and have a look at the ruins of Ochery 
 Chapel. 
 
 One habit at least of Mr. Lambert's school life remained 
 with him. He was still a proficient at telling tales. 
 
88 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 INNISHOCHERY ISLAND lay on the water like a great greee 
 bouquet, with a narrow grey lace edging of stony beach. 
 From the lake it seemed that the foliage stood in a solid 
 impenetrable mass, and that nothing but the innumerable 
 wood-pigeons could hope to gain its inner recesses ; even 
 the space of grass which, at the side of the landing-place, 
 drove a slender wedge up among the trees, had still the 
 moss-grown stumps upon it that told it had been recovered 
 by force from the possession of the tall pines and thick 
 hazel and birch scrub. The end of the wedge narrowed 
 into a thread of a path which wound its briary way among 
 the trees with such sinuous vagueness, and such indifference 
 to branches overhead and rocks underfoot, that to follow it 
 was both an act of faith and a penance. Near the middle 
 of the island it was interrupted by a brook that slipped 
 along whispering to itself through the silence of the wood, 
 and though the path made a poor shift to maintain its con- 
 tinuity with stepping-stones, it expired a few paces farther 
 on in the bracken of a little glade. 
 
 It was a glade that had in some elfish way acquired an 
 expression of extremest old age. The moss grew deep in 
 the grass, lay deep on the rocks; stunted birch-trees en- 
 circled it with pale twisted arms hoary with lichen, and, at 
 the farther end of it, a grey ruined chapel, standing over the 
 pool that was the birthplace of the stream, fulfilled the last 
 requirement of romance. On this hot summer afternoon 
 the glade had more than ever its air of tranced meditation 
 upon other days and superiority to the outer world, lulled in 
 its sovereignty of the island by the monotone of humming 
 insects, while on the topmost stone of the chapel a magpie 
 gabbled and cackled like a court jester. Christopher 
 thought, as he sat by the pool smoking a cigarette, that he 
 had done well in staying behind under the pretence of 
 photographing the yacht from the landing-place, and thus 
 eluding the rest of the party. He was only intermittently 
 unsociable, but he had always had a taste for his own 
 society, and, as he said to himself, he had been going strong 
 all the morning, and the time had come for solitude and 
 tobacco. 
 
The Real Charlotte. 89 
 
 He was a young man of a reflective turn, and had artistic 
 aspirations which, had he been of a hardier nature, would 
 probably have taken him further than photography. But 
 Christopher's temperament held one or two things unusual 
 in the amateur. He had the saving, or perhaps fatal power 
 of seeing his own handiwork with as unflattering an eye as 
 he saw other people's. He had no confidence in anything 
 about himself except his critical ability, and as he did not 
 satisfy that, his tentative essays in painting died an early 
 death. It was the same with everything else. His fastidi- 
 ous dislike of doing a thing indifferently was probably a 
 form of conceit, and though it was a higher form than the 
 common vanity whose geese are all swans, it brought about 
 in him a kind of deadlock. His relations thought him ex- 
 tremely clever, on the strength of his university career and 
 his intellectual fastidiousness, and he himself was aware 
 that he was clever, and cared very little for the knowledge. 
 Half the people in the world were clever nowadays, he said 
 to himself with indolent irritability, but genius was another 
 affair ; and, having torn up his latest efforts in water-colour 
 and verse, he bought a camera, and betook himself to the 
 more attainable perfection of photography. 
 
 It was delightful to lie here with the delicate cigarette 
 smoke keeping the flies at bay, and the grasshoppers whirring 
 away in the grass, like fairy sewing-machines, and with the 
 soothing knowledge that the others had been through the 
 glade, had presumably done the ruin thoroughly, and were 
 now cutting their boots to pieces on the water-fretted lime- 
 stone rocks as they scrambled round from the shore to the 
 landing-place. This small venerable wood, and the boulders 
 that had lain about the glade through sleepy centuries 
 till the moss had smothered their outlines, brought to 
 Christopher's mind the enchanted country through which 
 King Arthur's knights rode ; and he lay there mouthing to 
 himself fragments of half-remembered verse, and wondering 
 at the chance that had reserved for him this backwater in a 
 day of otherwise dubious enjoyment. He even found him- 
 self piecing together a rhyme or two on his own account ; but, 
 as is often the case, inspiration was paralysed by the over- 
 whelming fulness of the reality ; the fifth line refused to ex- 
 press his idea, and the interruption of lyric emotion caused 
 
90 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 by the making and lighting of a fresh cigarette proved fatal to 
 the prospects of the sonnet. He felt disgusted with himself 
 and his own futility. When he had been at Oxford not 
 thus had the springs of inspiration ceased to flow. He had 
 begun to pass the period of water-colours then, but not the 
 period when ideas are as plenty and as full of x novelty as 
 leaves in spring, and the knowledge has not yet come that 
 they, like the leaves, are old as the world itself. 
 
 For the past three or four years the social exigencies of 
 Government House life had not proved conducive to 
 fervour of any kind, and now, while he was dawdling away 
 his time at Bruff, in the uninterested expectation of another 
 appointment, he found that he not only could not write, 
 but that he seemed to have lost the wish to try. 
 
 " I suppose I am sinking into the usual bucolic stupor," 
 he said to himself, as he abandoned the search for the 
 vagrant rhyme. " If I only could read the Field, and had 
 a more spontaneous habit of cursing, I should be an ideal 
 country gentleman." 
 
 He crumpled into his pocket again the envelope on the 
 back of which he had been scribbling, and told himself that 
 it was more philosophic and more simple to enjoy things in 
 the homely, pre-historic manner, without trying to express 
 them elaborately for the benefit of others. He was in- 
 tellectually effete, and what made his effeteness more hope- 
 less was that he recognised it himself. " I am perfectly 
 happy if I let myself alone," was the sum of his reflections. 
 " They gave me a little more culture than I could hold, and 
 it ran over the edge at first. Now I think I'm just about 
 sufficiently up in the bottle for Lismoyle form." He tilted 
 his straw hat over his nose, shut his eyes, and, leaning back, 
 soon felt the delicious fusion into his brain of the surround- 
 ing hum and soft movement that tells of the coming of out- 
 of-door summer sleep. 
 
 It is deplorable to think of the figure Christopher must 
 cut in the eyes of those whose robuster taste demands in a 
 young man some more potent and heroic qualities, a 
 gentlemanly hardihood in language and liquor, an interest- 
 ing suggestion of moral obliquity, or, at least, some heredi- 
 tary vice on which the character may make shipwreck with 
 magnificent helplessness. Christopher, with his preference 
 
The Real Charlotte. 91 
 
 for his sister's society, and his lack of interest in the 
 majority of manly occupations, from hunting to music halls, 
 has small claim to respect or admiration. The invertebrate- 
 ness of his character seemed to be expressed in his attitude, 
 as he lay, supine, under the birch trees, with the grass mak- 
 ing a luxurious couch for his lazy limbs, and the faint 
 breeze just stirring about him. His sleep was not deep 
 enough to still the breath of summer in his ears, but it had 
 quieted the jabber of the magpie to a distant purring, and 
 he was fast falling into the abyss of unconsciousness, when 
 a gentle, regular sound made itself felt, the fall of a footstep 
 and the brushing of a skirt through the grass. He lay very 
 still, and cherished an ungenial hope that the white-stemmed 
 birches might mercifully screen him from the invader. The 
 step came nearer, and something in its solidity and deter- 
 mination gave Christopher a guess as to whose it was, that 
 was speedily made certainty by a call that jarred all the 
 sleepy enchantment of the glade. 
 
 " Fran-cie ! " 
 
 Christopher shrank lower behind a mossy stone, and 
 wildly hoped that his unconcealable white flannels might be 
 mistaken for the stem of a fallen birch. 
 
 " Fran-cie ! " 
 
 It had come nearer, and Christopher anticipated the 
 inevitable discovery by getting up and speaking. 
 
 " I'm afraid she's not here, Miss Mullen. She has not 
 been here for half an hour at least." He did not feel bound 
 to add that when he first sat down by the pool, he had 
 heard Miss Fitzpatrick's and Mr. Hawkins' voices in high 
 and agreeable altercation on the opposite side of the island 
 to that taken by the rest of the party. 
 
 The asperity that had been discernible in Miss Mullen's 
 summons to her cousin vanished at once. 
 
 " My goodness me ! Mr. Dysart ! To think of your 
 being here all the time, 'Far from the madding crowd's 
 ignoble strife ! ' Here I am hunting for that naughty girl 
 to tell her to come and help to make tea, instead of letting 
 your poor sister have all the trouble by herself." 
 
 Charlotte was rather out of breath, and looked hot and 
 annoyed, in spite of the smile with which she lubricated her 
 remark. 
 
92 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 "Oh, my sister is used to that sort of thing," said 
 Christopher, " and Miss Hope-Drummond is there to help, 
 isn't she ? " 
 
 Charlotte had seated herself on a rock, and was fanning 
 herself with her pocket-handkerchief; evidently going to 
 make herself agreeable, Christopher thought, with an irrita- 
 bility that lost no detail of her hand's ungainly action. 
 
 " I don't think Miss Hope-Drummond is much in the 
 utilitarian line," she said, with a laugh that was as slighting 
 as she dared to make it. " Hers is the purely ornamental, 
 I should imagine. Now, I will say for poor Francie, if she 
 was there, no one would work harder than she would, and, 
 though I say it that shouldn't, I think she's ornamental 
 too." 
 
 " Oh, highly ornamental/' said Christopher politely. " I 
 don't think there can be any doubt about that." 
 
 "You're very good to say so," re plied Charlotte effusively; 
 " but I can tell you, Mr. Dysart, that poor child has had to 
 make herself useful as well as ornamental before now. 
 From what she tells me I suspect there were few things she 
 didn't have to put her hand to before she came down to me 
 here," 
 
 " Really ! " said Christopher, as politely as before, " that 
 was very hard luck." 
 
 " You may say that it was ! " returned Charlotte, planting 
 a hand on each knee with elbows squared outwards, as was 
 her wont in moments of excitement, and taking up her 
 parable against the Fitzpatricks with all the enthusiasm of a 
 near relation. " Her uncle and aunt are very good people 
 in their way, I suppose, but beyond feeding her and putting 
 clothes on her back, I don't know what they did for her." 
 
 Charlotte had begun her sentence with comparative calm, 
 but she had gathered heat and velocity as she proceeded. 
 She paused with a snort, and Christopher, who had never 
 before been privileged to behold her in her intenser 
 moments, said, without a very distinct idea of what was ex- 
 pected of him : 
 
 " Oh, really, and who are these amiable people ? " 
 
 " Fitzpatricks ! " spluttered Miss Mullen, " and no better 
 than the dirt under my poor cousin Isabella Mullen's feet. 
 It's through her Francie's related to me, and not through 
 
The Real Charlotte. 93 
 
 the Fitzpatricks at all. fm no relation of the Fitzpatricks, 
 thank God ! My father's brother married a Butler, and 
 Francie's grandmother was a Butler too " 
 
 " It's very intricate," murmured Christopher ; " it sounds 
 as if she ought to have been a parlour-maid." 
 
 " And that's the only connection I am of the Fitzpatricks," 
 continued Miss Mullen at lightning speed, oblivious of 
 interruption ; " but Francie takes after her mother's family 
 and her grandmother's family, and your poor father would 
 tell you if he was able, that the Butlers of Tally Ho were as 
 well known in their time as the Dysarts of BrufF ! " 
 
 " I'm sure he would," said Christopher feebly, thinking 
 as he spoke that his conversations with his father had been 
 wont to treat of more stirring and personal topics than the 
 bygone glories of the Butlers. 
 
 " Yes, indeed, as good a family as any in the county. 
 People laugh at me, and say I'm mad about family and 
 pedigree ; but I declare to goodness, Mr. Dysart, I think 
 the French are right when they say, 'bong song ne poo 
 mongtirj and there's nothing like good blood after all." 
 
 Charlotte possessed the happy quality of believing in the 
 purity of her own French accent, and she felt a great satis- 
 faction in rounding her peroration with a quotation in that 
 tongue. She had, moreover, worked off some of the irrita- 
 tion which had, from various causes, been seething within 
 her when she met Christopher ; and when she resumed her 
 discourse it was in the voice of the orator, who, having 
 ranted out one branch of his subject, enters upon the next 
 with almost awful quietness. 
 
 " I don't know why I should bore you about a purely 
 family matter, Mr. Dysart, but the truth is, it cuts me to the 
 heart when I see your sister your charming sister yes, 
 and Miss Hope-Drummond too not that I'd mention her 
 in the same breath with Miss Dysart with every advantage 
 that education can give them, and then to think of that poor 
 girl, brought up from hand to mouth, and her little fortune 
 that should have been spent on herself going, as I may say, 
 to fill the stomachs of the Fitzpatricks' brood ! " 
 
 Christopher raised himself from the position of leaning 
 against a tree, in which he had listened, not without inter- 
 est, to the recital of Francie's wrongs. 
 
94 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 " I don't think you need apologise for Miss Fitzpatrick," 
 he said, rather more coldly than he had yet spoken. He 
 had ceased to be amused by Miss Mullen ; eccentricity was 
 one thing, but vulgar want of reserve was another ; he 
 wondered if she discussed her cousin's affairs thus openly 
 with all her friends. - 
 
 " It's very kind of you to say so," rejoined Miss Mullen 
 eagerly, " but I know very well you're not blind, any more 
 than I am, and all my affection for the girl can't make me 
 shut my eyes to what's unlady-like or bad style, though I 
 know it's not her fault." 
 
 Christopher looked at his watch surreptitiously. 
 
 " Now I'm delaying you in a most unwarrantable way," 
 said Charlotte, noting and interpreting the action at once, 
 " but I got so hot and tired running about the woods that I 
 had to take a rest. I was trying to get a chance to say a 
 word to your sister about Francie to ask her to be kind to 
 her, but I daresay it'll come to the same thing now that I've 
 had a chat with you/' she concluded, rising from her seat 
 and smiling with luscious affability. 
 
 A little below the pond two great rocks leaned towards 
 each other, and between them a hawthorn bush had pressed 
 itself up to the light. Something like a path was trodden 
 round the rocks, and a few rags impaled on the spikes of 
 the thorn bush denoted that it marked the place of a holy 
 well. Conspicuous among these votive offerings were two 
 white rags, new and spotless, and altogether out of keeping 
 with the scraps' of red flannel and dirty frieze that had been 
 left by the faithful in lieu of visiting cards for the patron 
 saint of the shrine. Christopher and Charlotte's way led 
 them within a few yards of the spot ; the latter's curiosity 
 induced her, as she passed, to examine the last contributions 
 to the thorn bush. 
 
 " I wonder who has been tearing up their best pocket- 
 handkerchiefs for a wish ? " said Christopher, putting up his 
 eye-glass and peering at the rags. 
 
 " Two bigger fools than the rest of them, I suppose," said 
 Miss Mullen shortly; "we'd better hurry on now, Mr. Dysart, 
 or we'll get no tea." 
 
 She swept Christopher in front of her along the narrow 
 path before he had time to see that the last two pilgrims 
 
The Real Charlotte. 95 
 
 had determined that the saint should make no mistake 
 about their identity, and had struck upon the thorn bush 
 the corners of their handkerchiefs, one of them, a silken 
 triangle, having on it the initials G. H., while on the other 
 was a large and evidently home-embroidered F. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 LATE that afternoon, when the sun was beginning to stoop 
 to the west, a wind came creeping down from somewhere 
 back of the mountains, and began to stretch tentative cats' 
 paws over the lake. It had pushed before it across the 
 Atlantic a soft mass of orange-coloured cloud, that caught 
 the sun's lowered rays, and spread them in a mellow glare 
 over everything. The lake turned to a coarse and furious 
 blue ; all the rocks and tree stems became like red gold, 
 and the polished brass top of the funnel of the steam-launch 
 looked as if it were on fire as Captain Cursiter turned the 
 Serpolette's sharp snout to the wind, and steamed at full 
 speed round Ochery Point. The yacht had started half an 
 hour before on her tedious zig-zag journey home, and was 
 already far down to the right, her sails all aglow as she 
 leaned aslant like a skater, swooping and bending under 
 the freshening breeze. 
 
 It was evident that Lambert wished to make the most 
 of his time, for almost immediately after the Daphne had 
 gone about with smooth precision, and had sprung away on 
 the other tack, the party on the launch saw a flutter of 
 white, and a top-sail was run up. 
 
 " By Jove ! Lambert didn't make much on that tack," 
 remarked Captain Cursiter to his brother-in-arms, as with 
 an imperceptible pressure of the wheel he serenely headed 
 the launch straight for her destination. " I don't believe 
 he's done himself much good with that top-sail either." 
 
 Mr. Hawkins turned a sour eye upon the Daphne^ and 
 said laconically, " Silly ass ; he'll smother her." 
 
 " Upon my word, I don't think he'll get in much before 
 nine o'clock to-night/' continued Cursiter j " it's pretty 
 nearly dead in his teeth, and he doesn't make a hundred 
 yards on each tack." 
 
96 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 Mr. Hawkins slammed the lid of the coal bunker, and 
 stepped past his chief into the after-part of the launch. 
 
 " I say, Miss Mullen," he began with scarcely suppressed 
 malignity, " Captain Cursiter says you won't see your niece 
 before to-morrow morning. You'll be sorry you wouldn't 
 let her come home in the launch after all." 
 
 " If she hadn't been so late for her tea," retorted Miss 
 Mullen, " Mr. Lambert could have started half an hour 
 before he did." 
 
 " Half an hour will be neither here nor there in this 
 game. What Lambert ought to have done was to have 
 started after luncheon, but I think I may remind you, Miss 
 Mullen, that you took him off to the holy well then." 
 
 " Well, and if I did, I didn't leave my best pocket hand- 
 kerchief hanging in rags on the thorn bush, like some other 
 people I know of ! " Miss Mullen felt that she had scored, 
 and looked for sympathy to Pamela, who, having as was 
 usual with her, borne the heat and burden of the day in the 
 matter of packings and washings-up, was now sitting, pale 
 and tired, in the stern, with Dinah solidly implanted in her 
 lap, and Max huddled miserably on the seat beside her. 
 Miss Hope-Drummond, shrouded in silence and a long 
 plaid cloak, paid no attention to anyone or anything. 
 There are few who can drink the dregs of the cup of 
 pleasuring with any appearance of enjoyment, and Miss 
 Hope-Drummond was not one of them. The alteration 
 in the respective crews of the yacht and the steam-launch 
 had been made by no wish of hers, and it is probable that 
 but for the unexpected support that Cursiter had received 
 from Miss Mullen, his schemes for Mr. Hawkins' welfare 
 would not have prospered. The idea had indeed occurred 
 to Miss Hope-Drummond that the proprietor of the launch 
 had perhaps a personal motive in suggesting the exchange, 
 but when she found that Captain Cursiter was going to 
 stand with his back to her, and steer, she wished that she 
 had not yielded her place in the Daphne to a young person 
 whom she already thought of as " that Miss Fitzpatrick," 
 applying. in its full force the demonstrative pronoun that 
 denotes feminine animosity more subtly and expressively 
 than is in the power of any adjective. Hawkins she felt 
 was out of her jurisdiction and unworthy of attention, and 
 
The Real Charlotte. 97 
 
 she politely ignored Pamela's attempts to involve her in 
 conversation with him. Her neat brown fringe was out of 
 curl; long strands of hair blew unbecomingly over her 
 ears ; her feet were very cold, and she finally buried herself 
 to the nose in a fur boa that gave her the effect of a mous- 
 tached and bearded Russian noble, and began, as was her 
 custom during sermons and other periods of tedium, to 
 elaborate the construction of a new tea-gown. 
 
 To do Mr. Hawkins justice, he, though equally ill-treated 
 by fate, rose superior to his disappointment. After his en- 
 counter with Miss Mullen he settled confidentially down in 
 the corner beside Pamela, and amused himself by pulling 
 Dinah's short, fat tail, and puffing cigarette smoke in her face, 
 while he regaled her mistress with an assortment of the 
 innermost gossip of Lismoyle. 
 
 On board the Daphne the aspect of things was less com- 
 fortable. Although the wind was too much in her teeth for 
 her to make much advance for home, there was enough to 
 drive her through the water at a pace that made the long 
 tacks from side to side of the lake seem as nothing, and to 
 give Francie as much as she could do to keep her big hat 
 on her head. She was sitting up on the weather side with 
 Lambert, who was steering ; and Christopher, in the bows, 
 was working the head sails, and acting as movable ballast 
 when they went about. At first, while they were beating 
 out of the narrow channel of Ochery, Francie had found it 
 advisable to lie in a heap beneath a tarpaulin, to avoid the 
 onslaught of the boom at each frequent tack, but now that 
 they were out on the open lake, with the top-sail hoisted, 
 she had risen to her present position, and, in spite of her 
 screams as the sharp squalls came down from the mountains 
 and lifted her hat till it stood on end like a rearing horse, 
 was enjoying herself amazingly. Unlike Miss Hope-Drum- 
 mond, she was pre-eminently one of those who come home 
 unflagging from the most prolonged outing, and to-day's en- 
 tertainment, so far from being exhausting, had verified to 
 the utmost her belief in the charms of the British officer, as 
 well as Miss Fanny Hemphill's prophecies of her success in 
 such quarters. Nevertheless she was quite content to re- 
 turn in the yacht ; it was salutary for Mr. Hawkins to see 
 that she could do without him very well, it took her from 
 
 G 
 
98 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 Charlotte's dangerous proximity, and it also gave her an 
 opportunity of appeasing Mr. Lambert, who, as she was quite 
 aware, was not in the best of tempers. So far her nimble 
 tongue had of necessity been idle. Christopher's position 
 in the bows isolated him from all conversation of the ordi- 
 nary pitch, and Lambert had been at first too much occupied 
 with the affairs of his boat to speak to her, but now, as a 
 sharper gust nearly snatched her hat from her restraining 
 hand, he turned to her. 
 
 "If it wasn't that you seem to enjoy having that hat blown 
 inside out every second minute," he said chillingly, " I'd 
 offer to lend you a cap." 
 
 " What sort is it ? " demanded Francie. " If it's anything 
 like that old deerstalker thing you have on your head now, 
 I wouldn't touch it with the tongs ! " 
 
 Lambert's only reply was to grope under the seat with 
 one hand, and to bring out a red knitted cap of the conven- 
 tional sailoring type, which he handed to Francie without so 
 much as looking at her. Miss Fitzpatrick recognised its 
 merits with half a glance, and, promptly putting it on her 
 head, stuffed the chef-d'oeuvre of the night before under the 
 seat among the deck-swabs and ends of rope that lurked 
 there. Christopher, looking aft at the moment, saw the 
 change of head-gear, and it was, perhaps, characteristic of 
 him that even while he acknowledged the appropriateness of 
 the red cap of liberty to the impertinence of the brilliant 
 face beneath it, he found himself reminded of the extra 
 supplement, in colours, of any Christmas number indubit- 
 ably pretty, but a trifle vulgar. 
 
 In the meantime the object of this patronising criticism, 
 feeling herself now able to give her undivided attention to 
 conversation, regarded Mr. Lambert's sulky face with open 
 amusement, and said : 
 
 "Well, now, tell me what made you so cross all day. 
 Was it because Mrs. Lambert wasn't out ? " 
 
 Lambert looked at her for an instant without speaking. 
 " Ready about," he called out " Mind your head ! Lee 
 helm ! " 
 
 The little yacht hung and staggered for a moment, and 
 then, with a diving plunge, started forward, with every sail 
 full and straining. Francie scrambled with some difficulty 
 
The Real Charlotte. 
 
 to the other side of the tiny cockpit, and climbed up on to 
 the seat by Mr. Lambert, just in time to see a very fair imi- 
 tation of a wave break on the weather bow and splash 
 a sparkling shower into Christopher's face. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Dysart ! are you drowned ? " she screamed 
 ecstatically. 
 
 " Not quite," he called back, his hair hanging in dripping 
 points on his forehead as he took off his cap and shook the 
 water out of it. " I say, Lambert, it's beginning to blow 
 pretty stiff; I'd take that top-sail off her, if I were 
 you." 
 
 "She's often carried it in worse weather than this," 
 returned Lambert ; " a drop of water will do no one any 
 harm." 
 
 Mr. Lambert in private, and as much as possible in 
 public, affected to treat his employer's son as a milksop, 
 and few things annoyed him more than the accepted 
 opinion on the lake that there was no better man in a boat 
 than Christopher Dysart. His secret fear that it was true 
 made it now all the more intolerable that Christopher 
 should lay down the law to him on a point of seamanship, 
 especially with Francie by, ready in that exasperating way 
 of hers to laugh at him on the smallest provocation. 
 
 " It'll do him no harm if he does get a drop of water 
 over him," he said to her in a low voice, forgetting for the 
 moment his attitude of disapproval. " Take some of the 
 starch out of him for once ! " He took a pull on the main 
 sheet, and, with a satisfied upward look at the top-sail in 
 question, applied himself to conversation. The episode 
 had done him good, and it was with almost fatherly serious- 
 ness that he began : 
 
 " Now, Francie, you were telling me a while ago that I 
 was cross all day. I'm a very old friend of yours, and 
 I don't mind saying that I was greatly put out by the way " 
 he lowered his voice " by the way you were going on 
 with that fellow Hawkins." 
 
 " I don't know what you mean by ' going on,' " interrupted 
 Francie, with a slight blush. " What's the harm in talking 
 to him if he likes to talk to me ? " 
 
 " Plenty of harm," returned Lambert quickly, " when he 
 makes a fool of you the way he did to-day. If you don't 
 
iop : \ : :\\ ;'-.", : : The ;Rlat Charlotte. 
 
 care that Miss Dysart and the rest of them think you know 
 no better than to behave like that, / do ! " 
 
 " Behave like what ? " 
 
 "Well, for one thing, to let him and Garry Dysart go 
 sticking grass in your stockings that way after luncheon ; 
 and for another to keep Miss Dysart waiting tea for you for 
 half an hour, and your only excuse to be to tell her that he 
 was * teaching you to make ducks and drakes ' the other 
 side of the island." The fatherly quality had died out of 
 his voice, and the knuckles of the hand that held the tiller 
 grew white from a harder grip. 
 
 Francie instinctively tucked away her feet under her 
 petticoats. She was conscious that the green pattern still 
 adorned her insteps, and that tell-tale spikes of grass still 
 projected on either side of her shoes. 
 
 " How could I help it ? It was just a silly game that he 
 and Garry Dysart made up between them ; and as for Miss 
 Dysart being angry with me, she never said a word to me. 
 She was awfully good ; and she and her brother had kept 
 the teapot hot for me, and everything." She looked 
 furtively at Christopher, who was looking out at the launch, 
 now crossing their path some distance ahead. " It was 
 more than you'd have done for me ! " 
 
 " Yes, very likely it was ; but I wouldn't have been laugh- 
 ing at you in my sleeve all the time as they were, or at least 
 as he was, anyhow ! " 
 
 " I believe that's a great lie," said Francie unhesitatingly ; 
 " and I don't care a jack-rat what he thought, or what you 
 think either ! Mr. Hawkins is a very nice young man, and 
 I'll talk to him just as much as I like ! And he's coming 
 to tea at Tally Ho to-morrow ; and what's more, I asked 
 him ! So now ! " 
 
 " Oh, all right ! " said Lambert, in such a constrained 
 voice of anger, that even Francie felt a little afraid of him. 
 " Have him to tea by all means ; and if I were you I should 
 send down to Limerick and have Miss McCarthy up to meet 
 him ! " 
 
 " What are you saying ? Who's Miss M'Carthy ? " asked 
 Francie, with a disappointing sparkle of enjoyment in her 
 eyes. 
 
 " She's the daughter of a George's Street tobacconist that 
 
The Real Charlotte. 161 
 
 your friend Mr. Hawkins was so sweet about a couple of 
 months ago that they packed him off here to be out of 
 harm's way. Look out, Dysart, I'm going about now," he 
 continued without giving Francie time to reply. " Lee- 
 helm ! " 
 
 " Oh, I'm sick of you and your old ' lee-helm ' ! " cried 
 Francie, as she grovelled again in the cockpit to avoid the 
 swing of the boom. "Why can't you go straight like Cap- 
 tain Cursiter's steamer, instead of bothering backwards and 
 forwards, side-ways, like this ? And you always do it just 
 when I want to ask you something." 
 
 This complaint, which was mainly addressed to Mr. 
 Lambert's canvas yachting shoes, received no attention. 
 When Francie came to the surface she found that the yacht 
 was at a more uncomfortable angle than ever, and with some 
 difficulty she established herself on the narrow strip of deck, 
 outside the coaming, with her feet hanging into the cockpit. 
 
 " Now, Mr. Lambert," she began at once, " you'd better 
 tell me Miss McCarthy's address, and all about her, and per- 
 haps if you're good I'll ask you to meet her too." 
 
 As she spoke, a smart squall struck the yacht, and Lam- 
 bert luffed her hard up to meet it. A wave with a ragged 
 white edge flopped over her bows, wetting Christopher 
 again, and came washing aft along the deck behind the 
 coaming. 
 
 " Look out aft there ! " he shouted. " She's putting her 
 nose into it ! I tell you that top-sail's burying her, 
 Lambert." 
 
 Lambert made no answer to either Francie or Christopher. 
 He had as much as he could do to hold the yacht, which 
 was snatching at the tiller like a horse at its bit, and ripping 
 her way deep through the waves in a manner too vigorous 
 to be pleasant. It was about seven o'clock, and though the 
 sun was still some height above the dark jagged wall of the 
 mountains, the clouds had risen in a tawny fleece across his 
 path, and it was evident that he would be seen no more that 
 day. The lake had turned to indigo. The beds of reeds 
 near the shore were pallid by contrast as they stooped under 
 the wind ; the waves that raced towards the yacht had each 
 an angry foam-crest, having, after the manner of lake waves, 
 lashed themselves into a high state of indignation on very 
 
/I02; ; ;;-; * ffo; -Real Charlotte. 
 
 short notice, and hissed and effervesced like soda-water all 
 along the lee-gunwale of the flying yacht. A few seagulls 
 that were trying to fight their way back down to the sea, 
 looked like fluttering scraps of torn white paper against the 
 angry bronze of the clouds, and the pine trees on the point, 
 under the lee of which they were scudding, were tossing 
 like the black plumes of a hearse. 
 
 Lambert put the yacht about, and headed back across the 
 lake. 
 
 " We did pretty well on that tack, Dysart," he shouted. 
 " We ought to get outside Screeb Point with the next one, 
 and then we'll get the wind a point fairer, and make better 
 weather of it the rest of the way home." 
 
 He could see the launch, half a mile or so beyond the 
 point, ploughing steadily along on her way to Lismoyle, and 
 in his heart he wished that Francie was on board of her. 
 He also wished that Christopher had held his confounded 
 tongue about the top-sail. If he hadn't shoved in his oar 
 where he wasn't wanted, he'd have had that top-sail off her 
 twenty minutes ago ; but he wasn't going to stand another 
 man ordering him about in his own boat. 
 
 " Look here, Francie," he said, " you must look out for 
 yourself when I'm going about next time. It's always a bit 
 squally round this point, so you'd better keep down in the 
 cockpit till we're well on the next tack." 
 
 " But I'll get all wet down there," objected Francie, "and 
 I'd much rather stay up here and see the fun." 
 
 " You talk as if it was the top of a tram in Sackville 
 Street," said Lambert, snatching a glance of provoked 
 amusement at her unconcerned face. "I can tell you it 
 will take a good deal more holding on to than that does. 
 Promise me now, like a good child," he went on, with a 
 sudden thrill of anxiety at her helplessness and ignorance, 
 " that you'll do as I tell you. You used to mind what I 
 said to you." 
 
 He leaned towards her as he spoke, and Francie raised 
 her eyes to his with a laugh in them that made him 
 for the moment forgetful of everything else. They were 
 in the open water in the centre of the lake by this time. 
 And in that second a squall came roaring down upon 
 them. 
 
The Real Charlotte. 103 
 
 " Luff ! " shouted Christopher, letting go the head sheets. 
 " Luff, or we're over ! " 
 
 Lambert let go the main sheet and put the tiller hard 
 down with all the strength he was master of, but he was just 
 too late. In that moment, when he had allowed his 
 thoughts to leave his steering, the yacht had dragged her- 
 self a thought beyond his control. The rough hand of the 
 wind struck her, and, as she quivered and reeled under the 
 blow, another and fiercer gust caught hold of her, and flung 
 her flat on her side on the water. 
 
 Before Christopher had well realised what had happened, 
 he had gone deep under water, come to the surface again, 
 and was swimming, with a vision before him of a white 
 figure with a red cap falling headlong from its perch. He 
 raised himself and shook the water out of his eyes, and 
 swimming a stroke or two to get clear of the mast, with its 
 sails heaving prone on the water like the pinions of a great 
 wounded bird, he saw over the shoulders of the hurrying 
 waves the red cap and the white dress drifting away to 
 leeward. Through the noise of the water in his ears, and 
 the confusion of his startled brain, he heard Lambert's voice 
 shouting frantically he did not know what ; the whole force 
 of his nature was set and centred on overtaking the red cap, 
 to which each stroke was bringing him nearer and nearer as 
 it appeared and reappeared ahead of him between the 
 steely backs of the waves. She lay horribly still, with the 
 water washing over her face ; and as Christopher caught 
 her dress, and turned, breathless, to try to fight his way 
 back with her to the wrecked yacht, he seemed to hear a 
 hundred voices ringing in his ears and telling him that she 
 was dead. He was a good and practised swimmer, but not 
 a powerful one. His clothes hung heavily about him, and 
 with one arm necessarily given to his burden, and the waves 
 and wind beating him back, he began to think that his task 
 was more than he would be able to accomplish. He had 
 up to this, in the intensity of the shock and struggle, forgotten 
 Lambert's existence, but now the agonised shouts that he 
 had heard came back to him, and he raised himself high in 
 the water and stared about with a new anxiety. To his in- 
 tense relief he saw that the yacht was still afloat, was, in 
 fact, drifting slowly down towards him, and in the water 
 
104 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 not ten yards from him was her owner, labouring towards 
 him with quick splashing strokes, and evidently in a very 
 exhausted state. His face was purple-red, his eyes half 
 starting out of his head, and Christopher could hear his 
 hard breathing as he slowly bore down upon him. 
 
 " She's all right, Lambert ! " Christopher cried out, 
 though his heart belied the words. " I've got her ! Hold 
 hard ; the yacht will be down on us in a minute." 
 
 Whether Lambert heard the words or no was not ap- 
 parent. He came struggling on, and as soon as he got 
 within reach, made a snatch at Francie's dress. Chris- 
 topher had contrived to get his left arm round her waist, 
 and to prop her chin on his shoulder, so that her face 
 should be above the water, and, as Lambert's weight swung 
 on him, it was all he could do to keep her in this position. 
 
 " You'll drown us all if you don't let go ! " Uttermost 
 exertion and want of breath made Christopher's voice wild 
 and spasmodic. " Can't you tread water till the boat gets 
 to us?" 
 
 Lambert still speechlessly and convulsively dragged at 
 her, his breath breaking from him in loud gasps, and his 
 face working. 
 
 " Good God, he's gone mad ! " thought Christopher ; 
 " we're all done for if he won't let go." In desperation he 
 clenched his fist, with the intention of hitting Lambert on 
 the head, but just as he gathered his forces for this extreme 
 measure something struck him softly in the back. Lam- 
 bert's weight had twisted him round so that he was no 
 longer facing the yacht, and he did not know how near 
 help was. It was the boom of the Daphne that had touched 
 him like a friendly hand, and he turned and caught at it 
 with a feeling of more intense thankfulness than he had 
 known in all his life. 
 
 The yacht was lying over on her side, half full of water, 
 but kept afloat by the air-tight compartments that Mrs. 
 Lambert's terrors had insisted on, and that her money had 
 paid for, when her husband had first taken to sailing on the 
 lake. Christopher was able with a desperate effort to get 
 one knee on to the submerged coaming of the cockpit, and 
 catching at its upper side with his right hand, he recovered 
 himself and prepared to draw Francie up after him. 
 
The Real Charlotte. 105 
 
 " Come, Lambert, let go ! " he said threateningly, " and 
 help me to get her out of the water. You need not be 
 afraid, you can hold on to the boat." 
 
 Lambert had not hitherto tried to speak, but now with 
 the support that the yacht gave him, his breath came back 
 to him a little. 
 
 " Damn you ! " he spluttered, the loud sobbing breaths 
 almost choking him, " I'm not afraid ! Let her go ! Take 
 your arm from round her, I can hold her better than you 
 can. Ah ! " he shrieked, suddenly seeing Francie's face, as 
 Christopher, without regarding what he said, drew her 
 steadily up from his exhausted grasp, " she's dead ! you've 
 let her drown ! " 
 
 His head fell forward, and Christopher thought with the 
 calm of despair, " He's going under, and I can't help him if 
 he does. Here, Lambert ! man alive, don't let go ! There ! 
 do you hear the launch whistling ? They're coming to 
 us?" 
 
 Lambert's hand, with its shining gold signet-ring, was 
 gripping the coaming under water with a grasp that was 
 already mechanical. It seemed to Christopher that it had 
 a yellow, drowned look about it. He put out his foot, and, 
 getting it under Lambert's chin, lifted his mouth out of the 
 water. The steam-launch was whistling incessantly, in 
 long notes, in short ones, in jerks, and he lifted up his 
 voice against the forces of the wind and the hissing and 
 dashing of the water to answer her. Perhaps it was the 
 dull weight on his arm and the stricken stillness of the face 
 that lay in utter unconsciousness on his shoulder, but he 
 scarcely recognised his own voice, it was broken with such 
 a tone of stress and horror. He had never before heard such 
 music as Hawkins' shout hailing him in answer, nor seen a 
 sight so heavenly fair as the bow of the Serpolette cutting 
 its way through the thronging waves to their rescue. White 
 faces staring over her gunwale broke into a loud cry when 
 they saw him hanging, half-spent, against the tilted deck of 
 the Daphne. It was well, he thought, that they had not 
 waited any longer. The only question was whether they 
 were not even now too late. His head swam from excite- 
 ment and fatigue, his arms and knees trembled, and when 
 at last Francie, Lambert, and finally he himself, were lifted 
 
106 The Real Charlotte 
 
 on board the launch, it seemed the culminating point of a 
 long and awful nightmare that Charlotte Mullen should 
 fling herself on her knees beside the bodies of her cousin 
 and her friend, and utter yell after yell of hysterical 
 lamentation. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 " SAUSAGES and bacon, Lady Dysart ! Yes, indeed, that 
 was his breakfast, and that for a man who if you'll excuse 
 the expression, Lady Dysart, but, indeed, I know you're 
 such a good doctor that I'd like you to tell me if it was 
 quite safe who was vomiting lake water for half an hour 
 after he was brought into the house the night before." 
 
 " Do you really mean that he came down to breakfast ? " 
 asked Lady Dysart, with the flattering sincerity of interest 
 that she bestowed on all topics of conversation, but 
 especially on those that related to the art and practice of 
 medicine. " He ought to have stayed in bed all day to let 
 the system recover from the shock." 
 
 " Those were the very words I used to him, Lady Dysart," 
 returned Mrs. Lambert dismally; "but indeed all the 
 answer he made was, ' Fiddle-de-dee ! ' He wouldn't have 
 so much as a cup of tea in his bed, and you may think what 
 I suffered, Lady Dysart, when I was down in the parlour 
 making the breakfast and getting his tray ready, when I 
 heard him in his bath overhead just as if he hadn't been 
 half-drowned the night before. I didn't tell you that, Mrs. 
 Gascogne," she went on, turning her watery gaze upon the 
 thin refined face of her spiritual directress. " Now if it 
 was me such a thing happened to, I'd have that nervous 
 dread of water that I couldn't look at it for a week." 
 
 " No, I am sure you would not," answered Mrs. 
 Gascogne with the over-earnestness which so often ship- 
 wrecks the absent-minded ; " of course you couldn't expect 
 him to take it if it wasn't made with really boiling water." 
 
 Mrs. Lambert stared in stupefaction, and Lady Dysart, 
 far from trying to cloak her cousin's confusion, burst into a 
 delighted laugh. 
 
 " Kate ! I don't believe you heard a single word that 
 
The Real Charlotte. 107 
 
 Mrs. Lambert said ! You were calculating how many 
 gallons of tea will be wanted for your school feast." 
 
 " Nonsense, Isabel ! " said Mrs. Gascogne hotly, with an 
 indignant and repressive glance at Lady Dysart, "and how 
 was it " turning to Mrs. Lambert, " that he a swallowed 
 so much lake water ? " 
 
 " He was cot under the sail, Mrs. Gascogne. He made 
 a sort of a dash at Miss Fitzpatrick to save her when she 
 was falling, and he slipped someway, and got in under the 
 sail and he was half-choked before he could get out ! " A 
 tear of sensibility trickled down the good turkey-hen's red 
 beak. " Indeed, I don't know when I've been so upset, 
 Lady Dysart," she quavered. 
 
 " Upset ! " echoed Lady Dysart, raising her large eyes 
 dramatically to the cut glass chandelier, " I can well believe 
 it ! When it came to ten o'clock and there was no sign of 
 them, I was simply raging up and down between the house 
 and the pier like a mad bull robbed of its whelps ! " She 
 turned to Mrs. Gascogne, feeling that there was a biblical 
 ring in the peroration that demanded a higher appreciation 
 than Mrs. Lambert could give, and was much chagrined to 
 see that lady concealing her laughter behind a handker- 
 chief. 
 
 Mrs. Lambert looked bewilderedly from one to the other, 
 and, feeling that the ways of the aristocracy were beyond 
 her comprehension, went on with the recital of her own 
 woes. 
 
 " He actually went down to Limerick by train in the 
 afternoon he that was half-drowned the day before, and a 
 paragraph in the paper about his narrow escape. I haven't 
 had a wink of sleep those two nights, what with palpitations 
 and bad dreams. I don't believe, Lady Dysart, I'll ever be 
 the better of it." 
 
 " Oh, you'll get over it soon, Mrs. Lambert," said Lady 
 Dysart cheerfully; "why, I had no less than three chil- 
 dren" 
 
 " Calves," murmured Mrs. Gascogne, with still streaming 
 eyes. 
 
 " Children," repeated Lady Dysart emphatically, " and I 
 thought they were every one of them drowned ! " 
 
 " Oh, but a husband^ Lady Dysart," cried Mrs. Lambert 
 
io8 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 with orthodox unction ; " what are children compared to the 
 husband?" 
 
 " Oh er of course not," said Lady Dysart, with some- 
 thing less than her usual conviction of utterance, her 
 thoughts flying to Sir Benjamin and his bath chair. 
 
 " By the way," struck in Mrs. Gascogne, " my husband 
 desired me to say that he hopes to come over to-morrow 
 afternoon to see Mr. Lambert, and to hear all about the 
 accident." 
 
 Mrs. Lambert looked more perturbed than gratified. " It's 
 very kind of the Archdeacon, I'm sure," she said nervously ; 
 41 but Mr. Lambert " (Mrs. Lambert belonged to the large 
 class of women who are always particular to speak of their 
 husbands by their full style and title) "Mr. Lambert is 
 most averse to talking about it, and perhaps if the 
 Archdeacon didn't mind n 
 
 "That's just what I complain of in Christopher," ex- 
 claimed Lady Dysart, breaking with renewed vigour into 
 the conversation. " He was most unsatisfactory about it all. 
 Of course, when he came home that night, he was so ex- 
 hausted that I spared him. 'I said, ' Not one word will I 
 allow you to say to-night, and I command you to stay in bed 
 for breakfast to-morrow morning ! ' I even went down at 
 one o'clock, and pinned a paper on William's door, so that 
 he shouldn't call him. Well" Lady Dysart, at this 
 turning-point of her story, found herself betrayed into 
 saying "My dear," but had presence of mind enough to 
 direct the expression at Mrs. Gascogne. " Well, my dear, 
 when I went up in the morning, craving for news, he was 
 most confused and unsatisfactory. He pretended he knew 
 nothing of how it had happened, and that after the upset 
 they all went drifting about in a sort of a knot till the yacht 
 came down on top of them. But, of course, something 
 more must have happened to them than that I It really 
 was the greatest pity that Miss Fitzpatrick got stunned by 
 that blow on the head just at the beginning of the whole 
 business. She would have told us all about it. But men 
 never can describe anything." 
 
 " Oh, well, I assure you, Lady Dysart," piped the turkey 
 hen, " Mr. Lambert described to me all that he possibly 
 could, and he said Mr. Dysart gave every assistance in his 
 
The Real Charlotte. 109 
 
 power, and was the greatest help to him in supporting that 
 poor girl in the water ; but the townspeople were so very 
 inquisitive, and really annoyed him so much with their ques- 
 tions, that he said to me this morning he hoped he'd hear 
 no more about it, which is why I took the liberty of asking 
 Mrs. Gascogne, that the Archdeacon wouldn't mention it to 
 him." 
 
 " Oh, yes, yes," said Mrs. Gascogne very politely, recall- 
 ing herself with difficulty from the mental excursion on 
 which she had started when Lady Dysart's unrelenting eye 
 had been removed. " I am sure he will a be delighted. 
 I think, you know, Isabel, we ought " 
 
 Lady Dysart was on her feet in a moment. " Yes, 
 indeed, we ought ! " she responded briskly. " I have to 
 pick up Pamela. Good-bye, Mrs. Lambert ; I hope I shall 
 find you looking better the next time I see you, and remem- 
 ber, if you cannot sleep, that there is no opiate like an open 
 window ! " 
 
 Mrs. Lambert's exclamation of horror followed her visitors 
 out of the room. Open windows were regarded by her as a 
 necessary housekeeping evil, akin to twigging carpets and 
 whitewashing the kitchen, something to be got over before 
 anyone came downstairs. Not even her reverence for Lady 
 Dysart would induce her to tolerate such a thing in any 
 room in which she was, and she returned to her woolwork, 
 well satisfied to let the July sunshine come to her through 
 the well-fitting plate-glass windows of her hideous drawing- 
 room. 
 
 " The person I do pity in the whole matter," remarked 
 Lady Dysart, as the landau rolled out of the Rosemount 
 gates and towards Lismoyle, "is Charlotte Mullen. Of 
 course, that poor excellent little Mrs. Lambert got a great 
 shock, but that was nothing compared with seeing the sail 
 go flat down on the water, as the people in the launch did. 
 In the middle of all poor Pamela's own fright, when she was 
 tearing open one of the luncheon baskets to get some whisky 
 out, Charlotte went into raging hysterics, and roared, my 
 dear ! And then she all but fainted on to the top of Mr. 
 Hawkins. Who would ever have thought of her breaking 
 down in that kind of way ? " 
 
 " Faugh ! " said Mrs. Gascogne, " disgusting creature ! " 
 
i io The Real Charlotte. 
 
 * 
 
 " Now, Kate, you are always saying censorious things 
 about that poor woman. People can't help showing their 
 feelings sometimes, no matter how ugly they are ! All that 
 I can tell you is," said Lady Dysart, warming to fervour as 
 was her wont, " if you had seen her this afternoon as I did, 
 with the tears in her eyes as she described the whole thing 
 to me, and the agonies she was in about that girl, you would 
 have felt sorry for her." 
 
 Mrs. Gascogne shot a glance, bright with intelligence and 
 amusement, at her cousin's flushed handsome face, and held 
 her peace. With Mrs. Gascogne, to hold her peace was to 
 glide into the sanctuary of her own thoughts, and remain 
 there oblivious of all besides ; but the retribution that 
 would surely have overtaken her at the next pause in Lady 
 Dysart's harangue was averted by the stopping of the car- 
 riage at Miss Mullen's gate. 
 
 Francie lay back on her sofa after Pamela Dysart had left 
 her. She saw the landau drive away towards Bruff, with 
 the sun twinkling on the silver of the harness, and thought 
 with an ungrudging envy how awfully nice Miss Dysart was, 
 and how lovely it would be to have a carriage like that to 
 drive about in. People in Dublin, who were not half as 
 grand as the Dysarts, would have been a great deal too 
 grand to come and see her up in her room like this, but 
 here everyone was as friendly as they could be, and not a 
 bit stuck-up. It was certainly a good day for her when she 
 came down to Lismoyle, and in spite of all that Uncle 
 Robert had said about old Aunt Mullen's money, and how 
 Charlotte had feathered her own nest, there was no denying 
 that Charlotte was not a bad old thing after all. Her only 
 regret was that she had not seen the dress that Miss Dysart 
 had on this afternoon before she had got herself that horrid 
 ready-made pink thing, and the shirt with the big pink 
 horse-shoes on it. Fanny Hemphill's hitherto unquestioned 
 opinion in the matter of costume suddenly tottered in her 
 estimation, and, with the loosening of that buttress of her 
 former life, all her primitive convictions were shaken. 
 
 The latch of the gate clicked again, and she leaned 
 forward to see who was coming. "What nonsense it is 
 keeping me up here this way ! " she said to herself ; " there's 
 Roddy Lambert coming in, and won't he be cross when he 
 
The Real Charlotte. 1 1 1 
 
 finds that there's only Charlotte for him to talk to ! I will 
 go down to - morrow, no matter what they say, but I 
 suppose it will be ages before the officers call again now." 
 Miss Fitzpatrick became somewhat moody at this reflection, 
 and tried to remember what it was that Mr. Hawkins had 
 said about "taking shooting leave for the i2th"; she 
 wished she hadn't been such a fool as not to ask him what 
 he had meant by the i2th. If it meant the i2th of July, 
 she mightn't see him again till he came back, and goodness 
 knows when that would be. Roddy Lambert was all very 
 well, but what was he but an old married man. " Gracious ! " 
 she interrupted herself aloud with a little giggle, " how mad 
 he'd be if he thought I called him that ! " and Hawkins was 
 really a very jolly fellow. The hall-door opened again ; she 
 heard Charlotte's voice raised in leave-taking, and then Mr. 
 Lambert walked slowly down the drive and the hall-door 
 slammed. "He didn't stay long," thought Francie; "I 
 wonder if he's cross because I wasn't downstairs ? He's a 
 very cross man. Oh, look at him kicking Mrs. Bruff into 
 the bushes ! It's well for him Charlotte's coming upstairs 
 and can't see him ! " 
 
 Charlotte was not looking any the worse for what she had 
 gone through on the day of the accident ; in fact, as she 
 came into the room, there was an air of youthfulness and 
 good spirits about her that altered her surprisingly, and her 
 manner towards her cousin was geniality itself. 
 
 "Well, me child!" she began, "I hadn't a minute 
 since dinner to come and see you. The doorstep's worn 
 out with the world and his wife coming to ask how you are ; 
 and Louisa doesn't know whether she's on her head or her 
 heels with all the clean cups she's had to bring in ! " 
 
 "Well, I wish to goodness I'd been downstairs to help 
 her," said Francie, whirling her feet off the sofa and sitting 
 upright; "there's nothing ails me to keep me stuck up 
 here." 
 
 " Well, you shall come down to-morrow," replied Char- 
 lotte soothingly ; " I'm going to lunch with the Bakers, so 
 you'll have to come down to do your manners to Christopher 
 Dysart. His mother said he was coming to inquire for you 
 to-morrow. And remember that only for him the pike 
 would be eating you at the bottom of the lake this minute I 
 
H2 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 Mind that ! You'll have to thank him for saving your 
 life." 
 
 " Mercy on us," cried Francie ; " what on earth will I say 
 to him ? " 
 
 " Oh, you'll find plenty to say to him ! They're as easy 
 as me old shoe, all those Dysarts I'd pity no one that had 
 one of them to talk to, from the mother down. Did you 
 notice at the picnic how Pamela and her brother took all 
 the trouble on themselves ? That's what I call breeding, 
 and not sitting about to be waited on like that great lazy 
 hunks, Miss Hope-Drummond ! I declare I loathe the 
 sight of these English fine ladies, and my private belief is 
 that Christopher Dysart thinks the same of her, though he's 
 too well-bred to show it. Yes, my poor Susan," fondling 
 with a large and motherly hand the cat that was sprawling 
 on her shoulder ; " he's a real gentleman, like yourself, and 
 not a drop of dirty Saxon blood in him. He doesn't bring 
 his great vulgar bull-dog here to worry my poor son " 
 
 " What did Mr. Lambert say, Charlotte ? " asked Francie, 
 who began to be a little bored by this rhapsody. " Was he 
 talking about the accident ? " 
 
 " Very little," said Charlotte, with a change of manner ; 
 " he only said that poor Lucy, who wasn't there at all, was 
 far worse than any of us. As I told him, you, that we 
 thought was dead, would be down to-morrow, and not 
 worth asking after. Indeed we were talking about business 
 most of the time " She pressed her face down on the 
 cat's grey back to hide an irrepressible smile of recollection. 
 " But that's only interesting to the parties concerned." 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 FRANCIE felt an unexpected weakness in her knees when 
 she walked downstairs next day. She found herself clutch- 
 ing the stair-rail with an absurdly tight grasp, and putting 
 her feet down with trembling caution on the oil-cloth stair 
 covering, and when she reached the drawing-room she was 
 thankful to subside into Charlotte's arm-chair, and allow her 
 dizzy head to recover its equilibrium. She thought very 
 little about her nerves ; in fact, was too ignorant to know 
 
The Real Charlotte. 113 
 
 whether she possessed such things, and she gave a feeble 
 laugh of surprise at the way her heart jumped and fluttered 
 when the door slammed unexpectedly behind her. The 
 old green sofa had been pulled out from the wall and placed 
 near the open window, with the Dublin Express laid upon 
 it ; Francie noticed and appreciated the attention, and 
 noted, too, that an arm-chair, sacred to the use of visitors, 
 had been planted in convenient relation to the sofa. " For 
 Mr. Dysart, I suppose," she thought, with a curl of her 
 pretty lip ; " he'll be as much obliged to her as I am." She 
 pushed the chair away, and debated with herself as to 
 whether she should dislodge the two cats who, with faces of 
 frowning withdrawal from all things earthly, were heaped 
 in simulated slumber in the corner of the sofa. She chose 
 the arm-chair, and, taking up the paper, languidly read the 
 list of places where bands would play in the coming week, 
 and the advertisement of the anthem at St. Patrick's for the 
 next day. 
 
 How remote she felt from it all ! How stale appeared 
 these cherished amusements ! Most people would think 
 the Lismoyle choir a poor substitute for the ranks of white 
 surplices in the chancel of St. Patrick's, with the banners of 
 the knights hanging above them, but Francie thought it 
 much better fun to look down over the edge of the Lismoyle 
 gallery a* the red coats of Captain Cursiter's detachment, 
 than to stand crushed in the nave of the cathedral, even 
 though the most popular treble was to sing a solo, and 
 though Mr. Thomas Whitty might be waiting on the steps 
 to disentangle her from the crowd that would slowly surge 
 up them into the street. A heavy booted foot came along 
 the passage, and the door was opened by Norry, holding in 
 her grimy hand a tumbler containing a nauseous-looking 
 yellow mixture. 
 
 " Miss Charlotte bid me give ye a bate egg with a half 
 glass of whisky in it whenever ye'd come downstairs." She 
 stirred it with a black kitchen fork, and proffered the sticky 
 tumbler to Francie, who took it, and swallowed the thin, flat 
 liquid which it contained with a shudder of loathing. "How 
 bad y'are ! Dhrink every dhrop of it now ! An empty 
 sack won't stand, and ye're as white as a masheroon this 
 minute. God knows it's in yer bed ye should be, and not 
 
 H 
 
114 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 shtuck out in a chair in the middle of the flure readin' the 
 paper ! " Her eye fell on the apparently unconscious Mrs. 
 and Miss Bruff. " Ha, ha ! thin ! how cosy the two of yez 
 is on yer sofa ! Walk out, me Lady Ann ! " 
 
 This courtesy-title, the expression of Norry's supremest 
 contempt and triumph, was accompanied by a sudden on- 
 slaught with the hearth-brush, but long before it could reach 
 them, the ladies referred to had left the room by the open 
 window. 
 
 The room was very quiet after Norry had gone away. 
 Francie took the evicted holding of the cats, and fell speedily 
 into a doze induced by the unwonted half glass of whisky. 
 Her early dinner, an unappetising meal of boiled mutton 
 and rice pudding, was but a short interlude in the dulness 
 of the morning ; and after it was eaten, a burning tract of 
 afternoon extended itself between her and Mr. Dysart's 
 promised visit. She looked out of the window at the sailing 
 shreds of white cloud high up in the deep blue of the sky, 
 at the fat bees swinging and droning in the purple blossoms 
 of the columbine border, at two kittens playing furiously in 
 the depths of the mignonette bed ; and regardless of Char- 
 lotte's injunctions about the heat of the sun, she said to 
 herself that she would go out into the garden for a little. 
 It was three o'clock, and her room was as hot as an oven 
 when she went up to get her hat ; her head ached as she 
 stood before the glass and arranged the wide brim to her 
 satisfaction, and stuck her best paste pin into the sailor's 
 knot of her tie. Suddenly the door burst unceremoniously 
 open, and Norry's grey head and filthy face were thrust 
 round the edge of it. 
 
 " Come down, Miss Francie ! " she said in a fierce 
 whisper ; " give over making shnouts at yerself in the glass 
 and hurry on down ! Louisa isn't in, and sure I can't open 
 the doore the figure I am." 
 
 " Who's there ? " asked Francie, with flushing cheeks. 
 
 " How would I know ? I'd say 'twas Misther Lambert's 
 knock whatever. Sich galloppin' in and out of the house as 
 there is these two days ! Ye may let in this one yerself ! " 
 
 When Francie opened the hall-door she was both relieved 
 and disappointed to find that Norry had been right in the 
 matter of the knock. Mr. Lambert was apparently more 
 
The Real Charlotte. 115 
 
 taken by surprise than she was. He did not speak at once, 
 but, taking her hand, pressed it very hard, and when Francie, 
 finding the silence slightly embarrassing, looked up at him 
 with a laugh that was intended to simplify the situation, she 
 was both amazed and frightened to see a moisture suspiciously 
 like tears in his eyes. 
 
 " YOU you look rather washed out," he stammered. 
 
 " You're very polite ! Is that all you have to say to me ? " 
 she said, slipping her hand out of his, and gaily ignoring his 
 tragic tone. " You and your old yacht nearly washed me 
 out altogether ! At all events, you washed the colour out 
 of me pretty well." She put up her hands and rubbed her 
 cheeks. " Are you coming in or going out ? Charlotte's 
 lunching at the Bakers', and I'm going into the garden till 
 tea-time, so now you can do as you like." 
 
 " I'll come into the garden with you," he said, stepping 
 aside to let her pass out. " But are you sure your head is 
 well enough for you to go out in this sun ? " 
 
 " Sun your granny ! " responded Francie, walking gingerly 
 across the gravel in her high-heeled house shoes ; " I'm as 
 well as ever I was." 
 
 " Well, you don't look it," he said with a concerned glance 
 at the faint colour in her cheeks and the violet shadows 
 under her eyes. " Come and sit down in the shade ; it's 
 about all you're good for." 
 
 A path skirted the flower-beds and bent round the ever- 
 green-covered slope that rose between the house and the 
 road, and at the bend a lime-tree spread its flat, green boughs 
 lavishly over the path, shading a seat made of half-rotten 
 larch poles that extended its dilapidated arms to the passer- 
 by. 
 
 " Well now, tell me all about it," began Lambert as soon 
 as they had sat down. " What did you feel like when you 
 began to remember it all ? Were you very angry with 
 me?" 
 
 " Yes, of course, I was angry with you, and I am now 
 this minute, and haven't I a good right, with my new hat at 
 the bottom of the lake ? " 
 
 " I can tell you we were both pretty nearly at the bottom 
 of the lake along with it," said Lambert, who disapproved 
 of this frivolous way of treating the affair. " I don't sup 
 
Ii6 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 pose I ever was nearer death than I was when the sail was 
 on top of me." 
 
 Francie looked at him for one instant with awe-struck 
 eyes, and Lambert was congratulating himself on having 
 made her realise the seriousness of the situation, when she 
 suddenly burst out laughing. 
 
 " Oh ! " she apologised, " the thought just came into my 
 head of the look of Mrs. Lambert in a widow's cap, and 
 how she'd adore to wear one ! You know she would, now 
 don't you ? " 
 
 " And I suppose you'd adore to see her in one ? " 
 
 " Of course I would ! " She gave him a look that was 
 equivalent to the wag of the tail with which a dog assures 
 the obtuse human being that its worrying and growling are 
 only play. "You might know that without being told. 
 And now perhaps you'll tell me how poor Mrs. Lambert is ? 
 I hear she was greatly upset by the fright she got about you, 
 and indeed you're not worthy of it." 
 
 " She's much better, thank you." 
 
 He looked at Francie under his lowered lids, and tried to 
 find it in his heart to wish that she could sometimes be a 
 little more grown up and serious. She was leaning back 
 with her hat crushed against a trunk of the tree, so that its 
 brim made a halo round her face, and the golden green 
 light that filtered through the leaves of the lime moved like 
 water over her white dress. If he had ever heard the story 
 of ' ' Undine " it might have afforded him the comforting 
 hypothesis that this delicate, cool, youthful creature, with 
 her provoking charm, could not possibly be weighted with 
 the responsibility of a soul ; but an unfortunate lack of early 
 culture denied to Mr. Lambert this excuse for the levity 
 with which she always treated him a man fifteen years 
 older than she was, her oldest friend, as he might say, who 
 had always been kind to her ever since she was a scut of a 
 child. Her eyes were closed ; but an occasional quiver of 
 the long lashes told him that she had no intention of sleep- 
 ing ; she was only pretending to be tired, " out of tricks," 
 he thought angrily. He waited for a moment or two, and 
 then he spoke her name. The corners of her mouth curved 
 a little, but the eyelashes were not raised 
 
 " Are you tired, or are you shamming ? " 
 
The Real Charlotte. 117 
 
 " Shamming," was the answer, still with closed eyes. 
 
 " Don't you think you could open your eyes ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 Another short period of silence ensued, and the sound 
 of summer in the air round them strengthened and deepened, 
 as the colour strengthens and deepens in a blush. A wasp 
 strayed in under the canopy of the lime and idled inquisi- 
 tively about Francie's hat and the bunch of mignonette in 
 her belt, but she lay so still under this supreme test that 
 Lambert thought she must be really asleep, and taking out 
 his handkerchief prepared to route the invader. At the 
 same moment there came a sound of wheels and a fast- 
 trotting, horse on the road ; it neared them rapidly, and 
 Miss Fitzpatrick leaped to her feet and put aside the leaves 
 of the lime just in time to see the back of Mr. Hawkins' 
 head as his polo-cart spun past the Tally Ho gate. 
 
 " I declare I thought it was Mr. Dysart," she said, looking 
 a little ashamed of herself; " I wonder where in the name 
 of fortune is Mr. Hawkins going ? " 
 
 " I thought you were so dead asleep you couldn't hear 
 anything," said Lambert, with a black look; "he's not 
 coming here, anyhow." 
 
 She dropped back into the corner of the seat again as if 
 the start forward had tired her. 
 
 " Oh ! I was so frightened at the wasp, and I wouldn't 
 let on ! " 
 
 " I wonder why you're always so unfriendly with me now," 
 began Lambert suddenly, fixing his eyes upon her; "there 
 was once on a time when we were great friends, and you 
 used to write to me, and you'd say you were glad to see me 
 when I went up to town, but now you're so set up with your 
 Dysarts and your officers that you don't think your old 
 friends worth talking to." 
 
 " Oh ! " Francie sat up and faced her accuser valiantly, 
 but with an inwardly-stricken conscience. " You know 
 that's a dirty, black lie ! " 
 
 " I came over here this afternoon," pursued Lambert, 
 " very anxious about you, and wanting to tell you how sorry 
 I was, and how I accused myself for what had happened 
 and how am I treated ? You won't so much as take the 
 trouble to speak to me. I suppose if I was one of your 
 
Il8 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 swell new friends Christopher Dysart, for instance, who 
 you are looking out for so hard it would be a very different 
 story." 
 
 By the time this indictment was delivered, Francie's face 
 had more colour in it than it had known for some days ; 
 she kept her eyes on the ground and said nothing. 
 
 " I knew it was the way of the world to kick a fellow out 
 of the way when you had got as much as you wanted out of 
 him, and I suppose as I am an old married man I have no 
 right to expect anything better, but I did think you'd have 
 treated me better than this ! " 
 
 " Don't," she said brokenly, looking up at him with her 
 eyes full of tears ; " I'm too tired to fight you." 
 
 Lambert took her hand quickly. " My child," he said, 
 in a voice rough with contrition and pity, " I didn't mean 
 to hurt you ; I didn't know what I was saying." He 
 tenderly stroked the hand that lay limply in his. " Tell me 
 you're not vexed with me." 
 
 " No," said Francie, with a childish sob \ " but you said 
 horrid things to me " 
 
 "Well, I never will again," he said soothingly. "We'll 
 always be friends, won't we ? " with an interrogatory pressure 
 of the hand. He had never seen her in such a mood as 
 this ; he forgot the inevitable effect on her nerves of what 
 she had gone through, and his egotism made him believe 
 that this collapse of her usual supple hardihood was due to 
 the power of hh> reproaches. 
 
 " Yes," she answered, with the dawn of a smile. 
 
 "Till the next time, anyhow," continued Lambert, still 
 holding her hand in one of his, and fumbling in his breast 
 pocket with the other. " And now, look here what I 
 brought you to try and make up to you for nearly drowning 
 you." He gently pulled her hand down from her eyes, and 
 held up a small gold bangle, with a horse-shoe in pearls on 
 it. " Isn't that a pretty thing ? " 
 
 Francie looked at it incredulously, with the tears still 
 shining on her eyelashes. 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Lambert, you don't mean you got that for me? 
 I couMrft take it. Why, it's real gold ! " 
 
 "Well, you've got to take it. Look what's written on it." 
 
 She took it from him, and saw engraved inside the 
 
The Real Charlotte. 119 
 
 narrow band of gold her own name and the date of the 
 accident. 
 
 " Now, you see it's yours already," he said. " No, you 
 mustn't refuse it," as she tried to put it back into his hand 
 again. "There," snapping it quickly on to her wrist, " you 
 must keep it as a sign you're not angry with me." 
 
 "It's like a policeman putting on a handcuff," said 
 Francie, with a quivering laugh. "I've often seen them 
 putting them on the drunken men at Dublin." 
 
 " And you'll promise not to chuck over your old friends?" 
 said Lambert urgently. 
 
 " No, I won't chuck them over," she replied, looking con- 
 fidingly at him. 
 
 " Not for anybody ? " He weighted the question with all 
 the expression he was capable of. 
 
 " No, not for anybody," she repeated, rather more readily 
 than he could have wished. 
 
 " And you're sure you're not angry with me ? " he per- 
 sisted, " and you like the bangle ? " 
 
 She had taken it off to re-examine it, and she held it up 
 to him. 
 
 " Here, put it on me again, and don't be silly," she said, 
 the old spirit beginning to wake in her eyes. 
 
 " Do you remember when you were a child the way you 
 used to thank me when I gave you anything ? " he asked, 
 pressing her hand hard. 
 
 " But I'm not a child now ! " 
 
 Lambert, looking in her face, saw the provoking smile 
 spread like sunshine from her eyes to her lips, and, intoxi- 
 cated by it, he stooped his head and kissed her. 
 
 Steps came running along the walk towards them, and 
 the fat face and red head of the Protestant orphan appeared 
 under the boughs of the lime-tree. 
 
 "A messenger from Bruffs afther bringing this here, 
 Miss Francie," she panted, tendering a letter in her fingers, 
 " an' Miss Charlotte lef me word I should get tea when 
 ye'd want it, an' will I wet it now ? " 
 
 Christopher had shirked the expression of Miss Fitz- 
 patrick's gratitude. 
 
120 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 " TALLY Ho LODGE. 
 "Mv DEAREST FANNY, 
 
 " Although I'm nearly dead after the bazaar I must write 
 you a line or two to tell you what it was like. It was scrum- 
 shous. I wore my white dress with the embroidery the first 
 day and the pink dress that you and I bought together the 
 second day and everybody liked me best in the white one. 
 It was fearful hot and it was great luck it was at the flower 
 stall Mrs. Gascogne asked me to sell. Kathleen Baker and 
 the Beatties had the refreshments and if you saw the colour 
 of their faces with the heat at tea-time I declare you'd have 
 to laugh. The Dysarts brought in a lovely lot of flowers 
 and Mr. Dysart was very nice helping me to tie them up. 
 You needn't get on with any of your nonsense about him, 
 he'd never think of flirting with me or anyone though he's 
 fearfully polite and you'd be in fits if you saw the way Miss 
 Hopedrummond the girl I told you about was running after 
 him and anyone could see he'd sooner talk to his sister or 
 his mother and I don't wonder for their both very nice 
 which is more than she is. Roddy Lambert was there of 
 course and poor Mrs. L. in a puce dress and everybody 
 from the whole country round. Mr. Hawkins was grand 
 fun. Nothing would do him but to come behind the 
 counter with me and Mrs. Gascogne and go on with the 
 greatest nonsense selling buttonholes to the old ladies and 
 making them buy a lot of old rotten jeranium cuttings that 
 was all Charlotte would give to the stall. The second day 
 it was only just the townspeople that were there and I 
 couldn't be bothered selling to them all day and little thanks 
 you get from them. The half of them came thinking they'd 
 get every thing for nothing because it was the last day and 
 you'd hear them fighting Mrs. Gascogne as if she was a 
 shopwoman. I sat up in the gallery with Hawkins most of 
 the evening and he brought up tea there and strawberries 
 and Charlotte was shouting and roaring round the place 
 looking for me and nobody knew where we were. 'Twas 
 lovely" 
 
 At this point Miss Fitzpatrick became absorbed in medita- 
 
The Real Charlotte. 121 
 
 tion, and the portrayal on the blotting-paper of a profile of 
 a conventionally classic type, which, by virtue of a mous- 
 tache and a cigarette, might be supposed to represent Mr. 
 Hawkins. She did not feel inclined to give further details 
 of her evening, even to Fanny Hemphill. As a matter of 
 fact she had in her own mind pressed the possibilities of her 
 acquaintance with Mr. Hawkins to their utmost limit, and 
 it seemed to her not impossible that soon she might have a 
 good deal more to say on the subject ; but, nevertheless, 
 she could not stifle a certain anxiety as to whether, after all, 
 there would ever be anything definite to tell. Hawkins was 
 more or less an unknown quantity ; his mere idioms and 
 slang were the language of another world. It was easy to 
 diagnose Tommy Whitty or Jimmy Jemmison and their 
 fellows, but this was a totally new experience, and the light 
 of previous flirtations had no illuminating power. She had, 
 at all events, the satisfaction of being sure that on Fanny 
 Hemphill not even the remotest shadow of an allusion 
 would be lost, and that, whatever the future might bring 
 forth, she would be eternally credited with the subjugation 
 of an English officer. 
 
 The profile with the moustache and the cigarette was re- 
 peated several times on the blotting-paper during this inter- 
 val, but not to her satisfaction ; her new bangle pressed its 
 pearly horse-shoes into the whiteness of her wrist and hurt 
 her, and she took it off and laid it on the table. It also, 
 and the circumstances of its bestowal, were among the 
 things that she had not seen fit to mention to the friend of 
 her bosom. It was nothing of course ; of no more signifi- 
 cance than the kiss that had accompanied it, except that she 
 had been glad to have the bangle, and had cared nothing 
 for the kiss ; but that was just what she would never be able 
 to get Fanny Hemphill to believe. 
 
 The soft, clinging tread of bare feet became audible in 
 the hall, and a crack of the dining-room door was opened. 
 
 " Miss Francie," said a voice through the crack, " th' 
 oven's hot." 
 
 " Have you the eggs and everything ready, Bid ? " asked 
 Francie, who was adding a blotted smoke-wreath to the 
 cigarette of the twentieth profile. 
 
 " I have, miss,'? replied the invisible Bid Sal, " an' Norry 
 
122 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 says to be hurrying, for 'tis short till Miss Charlotte '11 be 
 comin' in." 
 
 Francie closed the blotter on her half-finished letter, and 
 pursued the vanishing figure to the kitchen. Norry was 
 not to be seen, but on the table were bowls with flour, 
 eggs, and sugar, and beside them was laid a bunch of 
 twigs, tied together like a miniature birch-rod. The mak- 
 ing of a sponge-cake was one of Francie's few accomplish- 
 ments, and putting on an apron of dubious cleanliness, lent 
 by Louisa, she began operations by breaking the eggs, 
 separating the yolks from the whites, and throwing the 
 shells into the fire with professional accuracy of aim. 
 
 " Where's the egg-whisk, Bid ? " she demanded. 
 
 " "Tis thim that she bates the eggs with, Miss," answered 
 Bid Sal in the small, bashful voice by which she indicated 
 her extreme humility towards those in authority over her, 
 ha/iding the birch-rod to Francie as she spoke. 
 
 " Mercy on us ! What a thing ! I'd be all night beat- 
 ing them with that ! " 
 
 " Musha, how grand ye are ! " broke in Norry's voice 
 from the scullery, in tones of high disdain ; " if ye can't 
 bate eggs with that ye'd better lave it to thim that can ! " 
 Following her words came Norry herself, bearing an im- 
 mense saucepanful of potatoes, and having hoisted it on to 
 the fire, she addressed herself to Bid Sal. " Get out from 
 undher me feet out o' this ! I suppose it's to make cakes 
 ye'd go, in place of feedin' the pigs ! God knows I have 
 as much talked since breakfast as'd sicken an ass, but, in- 
 deed, I might as well be playin' the pianna as tellin' yer 
 business to the likes o' ye." 
 
 A harsh yell at this point announced that a cat's tail had 
 been trodden on, but, far from expressing compunction, 
 Norry turned with fury upon the latest offender, and seiz- 
 ing from a corner beside the dresser an ancient carriage 
 whip, evidently secreted for the purpose, she flogged the 
 whole assemblage of cats out of the kitchen. Bid Sal 
 melted away like snow in a thaw, and Norry, snatching the 
 bowl of eggs from Francie, began to thrash them with the 
 birch rod, scolding and grumbling all the time. 
 
 11 That ye may be happy ! " (This pious wish was with 
 Norry always ironical.) " God knows ye should be ashamed, 
 
The Real Charlotte. 123 
 
 filling yer shtummucks with what'll sicken thim, and 
 dhraggin' the people from their work to be runnin' afther 
 ye!" 
 
 " I don't want you to be running after me," began 
 Francie humbly. 
 
 " Faith thin that's the truth ! " returned the inexorable 
 Norry ; " if ye have thim off'cers running afther ye ye're 
 satisfied. Here, give me the bowl till I butther it. I'd 
 sooner butther it meself than to be lookin' at ye doin' it ! " 
 
 A loud cough, coming from the scullery, of the pecu- 
 liarly doleful type affected by beggars, momentarily inter- 
 rupted this tirade. 
 
 "Shdse mick, Nance ! Look at that, now, how ye have 
 poor Nance the Fool waitin' on me till I give her the 
 empty bottle for Julia Duffy." 
 
 Francie moved towards the scullery door, urged . by a 
 natural curiosity to see what manner of person Nance the 
 Fool might be, and saw, squatted on the damp flags, an 
 object which could only be described as a bundle of rags with 
 a cough in it The last characteristic was exhibited in such 
 detail at the sight of Francie that she retired into the 
 kitchen again, and ventured to suggest to Norry that the 
 bottle should be given as soon as possible, and the scullery 
 relieved of Nance the Fool's dreadful presence. 
 
 " There it is for her on the dhresser," replied Norry, 
 still furiously whipping the eggs ; " ye can give it yerself." 
 
 From the bundle of rags, as Francie approached it, there 
 issued a claw, which snatched the bottle and secreted it, and 
 Francie just caught a glimpse, under the swathing of rags, 
 of eyes so inflamed with crimson that they seemed to her 
 like pools of blood, and heard mouthings and mumblings 
 of Irish which might have been benedictions, but, if so, 
 were certainly blessings in disguise. 
 
 u That poor craythur walked three miles to bring me the 
 bottle I have there on the dhresser. It's yerr'b tay that 
 Julia Duffy makes for thim that has the colic." Norry was 
 softening a little as the whites of the eggs rose in stiff and 
 silvery froth. " Julia's a cousin of me own, through the 
 mother's family, and she's able to docthor as good as e'er a 
 docthor there's in it." 
 
 " I don't think I'd care to have her doctoring me,** said 
 
124 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 Francie, mindful of the touzled head and dirty face that 
 had looked down upon her from the window at Gurthna- 
 muckla. 
 
 " And little shance ye'd have to get her ! " retorted Norry; 
 " 'tis little she regards the likes o' you towards thim that 
 hasn't a Christhian to look to but herself." Norry defiantly 
 shook the foam from the birch rod, and proceeded with her 
 eulogy of Julia Duffy. " She's as wise a woman and as 
 good a scholar as what's in the country, and many's the 
 poor craythure that's prayin' hard for her night and morning 
 for all she done for thim. B'leeve you me, there's plinty 
 would come to her funeral that'd be follyin' their own only 
 for her and her doctherin'." 
 
 " She has a very pretty place," remarked Francie, who 
 wished to be agreeable, but could not conscientiously extol 
 Miss Duffy ; " it's a pity she isn't able to keep the house 
 nicer." 
 
 " Nice ! What way have she to keep it nice that hasn't 
 one but herself to look to ! And if it was clane itself, it's 
 all the good it'd do her that they'd throw her out of it 
 quicker." 
 
 " Who'd throw her out ? " 
 
 " I know that meself." Norry turned away and banged 
 open the door of the oven. " There's plinty that's ready to 
 pull the bed from undher a lone woman if they're lookin' for 
 it for theirselves." 
 
 The mixture had by this time been poured into its tin 
 shape, and, having placed it in the oven, Francie seated 
 herself on the kitchen table to superintend its baking. The 
 voice of conscience told her to go back to the dining-room 
 and finish her letter, but she repressed it, and, picking up a 
 kitten that had lurked, unsuspected, between a frying-pan 
 and the wall during the rout of its relatives, she proceeded 
 to while away the time by tormenting it, and insulting the 
 cockatoo with frivolous questions. 
 
 Miss Mullen's weekly haggle with the butcher did not 
 last quite as long as usual this Friday morning. She had, 
 in fact, concluded it by herself taking the butcher's knife, 
 and, with jocose determination, had proceeded to cut off 
 the special portion of the " rack " which she wished for, in 
 spite of Mr. Driscoll's protestations that it had been bespoke 
 
The Real Charlotte. 125 
 
 by Mrs. Gascogne. Exhilarated by this success, she walked 
 home at a brisk pace, regardless of the heat, and of the 
 weight of the rusty black tourists' bag which she always 
 wore, slung across her shoulders by a strap, on her ex- 
 peditions into the town. There was no one to be seen in 
 the house when she came into it, except the exiled cats, 
 who were sleeping moodily in a patch of sunshine on the 
 hall-mat, and after some passing endearments, their mistress 
 went on into the dining-room, in which, by preference, as 
 well as for economy, she sat in the mornings. It had, at all 
 events, one advantage over the drawing-room, in possessing 
 a sunny French window, opening on to the little grass- 
 garden a few untidy flower-beds, with a high, undipped 
 hedge surrounding them, the resort of cats and their break- 
 fast dishes, but for all that a pleasant outlook on a hot day. 
 Francie had been writing at the dinner-table, and Charlotte 
 sat down in the chair that her cousin had vacated, and 
 began to add up the expenses of the morning. When she 
 had finished, she opened the blotter to dry her figures, and 
 saw, lying in it, the letter that Francie had begun. 
 
 In the matter of reading a letter not intended for her eye, 
 Miss Mullen recognised only her own inclinations, and the 
 facilities afforded to her by fate, and in this instance one 
 played into the hands of the other. She read the letter 
 through quickly, her mouth set at its grimmest expression 
 of attention, and replaced it carefully in the blotting-case 
 where she found it. She sat still, her two fists clenched on 
 the table before her, and her face rather redder than 
 even the hot walk from Lismoyle had made it 
 
 There had been a good deal of information in the letter 
 that was new to her, and it seemed important enough to de- 
 mand much consideration. The reflection on her own con- 
 tribution to the bazaar did not hurt her in the least, in fact 
 it slightly raised her opinion of Francie that she should 
 have noticed it ; but that ingenuous confidence about the 
 evening spent in the gallery was another affair. At this 
 point in her reflections, she became aware that her eye was 
 attracted by something glittering on the green baize of the 
 dinner-table, half-hidden under two or three loose sheets of 
 paper. It was the bangle that she remembered having seen 
 on Francie's wrist, and she took it up and looked curiously 
 
126 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 at the double horse-shoes as she appraised its value. She 
 never thought of it as being real Francie was not at all 
 above an effective imitation and she glanced inside to see 
 what the mark might be. There was the eighteen-carat 
 mark sure enough, and there also was Francie's name and 
 the date, July ist, 189 . A moment's reflection enabled 
 Charlotte to identify this as the day of the yacht accident, 
 and another moment sufficed for her to determine that the 
 giver of the bangle had been Mr. Hawkins. She was only 
 too sure that it had not been Christopher, and certainly no 
 glimmer of suspicion crossed her mind that the first spend- 
 ings from her loan to Mr. Lambert were represented by the 
 bangle. 
 
 She opened the blotter, and read again that part of the 
 letter that treated of Christopher Dysart. " P'yah ! " she 
 said to herself, " the little fool ! what does she know about 
 him ? " At this juncture, the wheezing of the spring of the 
 passage-door gave kindly signal of danger, and Charlotte 
 deftly slipped the letter back into the blotter, replaced the 
 bangle under the sheets of paper, and was standing outside 
 the French window when Francie came into the room, with 
 flushed cheeks, a dirty white apron, and in her hands a 
 plate bearing a sponge-cake of the most approved shade of 
 golden-brown. At sight of Charlotte she stopped guiltily, 
 and, as the latter stepped in at the window, she became even 
 redder than the fire had made her. 
 
 " Oh I've just made this, Charlotte " she faltered ; " I 
 bought the eggs and the butter myself ; I sent Bid for them, 
 and Norry said she thought you wouldn't mind " ^ 
 
 On an ordinary occasion Charlotte might have minded 
 considerably even so small a thing as the heating of the 
 oven and the amount of flour and sugar needed for the con- 
 struction of the cake; but a slight, a very slight sense of 
 wrong-doing, conspired with a little confusion, consequent 
 on the narrowness of her escape, to dispose her to com- 
 pliance. 
 
 "Why, me dear child, why would I mind anything so 
 agreeable to me and all concerned as that splendour of a 
 cake that I see there ? I declare I never gave you credit 
 for being able to do anything half as useful ! 'Pon me 
 honour, I'll give a tea-party on the strength of it." Even as 
 
The Real Charlotte. 127 
 
 she spoke she had elaborated the details of a scheme of 
 which the motor should be the cake that Francie's own 
 hand had constructed. 
 
 The choir practice was poorly attended that afternoon. 
 A long and heavy shower, coming at the critical moment, 
 had combined with a still longer and heavier luncheon- 
 party given by Mrs. Lynch, the solicitor's wife, to keep 
 away several members. Francie had evaded her duties by 
 announcing that her only pair of thick boots had gone to be 
 soled, and only the most ardent mustered round Mrs. 
 Gascogne's organ bench. Of these was Pamela Dysart, 
 faithful, as was her wont, in the doing of what she had 
 undertaken; and as Charlotte kicked off her goloshes at 
 the gallery door, and saw Pamela's figure in its accustomed 
 place, she said to herself that consistency was an admirable 
 quality. Her approbation was still warm when she joined 
 Pamela at the church door after the practice was over, and 
 she permitted herself the expression of it. 
 
 "Miss Dysart, you're the only young woman of the 
 rising generation in whom I place one ha'porth of reliance ; 
 I can tell you, not one step would I have stirred out on the 
 chance of meeting any other member of the choir on a day 
 of this kind, but I knew I might reckon on meeting you here." 
 
 " Oh, I like coming to the practices," said Pamela, won- 
 dering why Miss Mullen should specially want to see her. 
 They were standing in the church porch waiting for Pamela's 
 pony-cart, while the rain streamed off the roof in a white veil 
 in front of them. " You must let me drive you home," she 
 went on ; " but I don't think the trap will come till this 
 downpour is over." 
 
 Under the gallery stairs stood a bench, usually appro- 
 priated to the umbrellas and cloaks of the congregation ; 
 and after the rest of the choir had launched themselves forth 
 upon the yellow torrent that took the place of the path 
 through the churchyard, Pamela and Miss Mullen sat them- 
 selves down upon it to wait. Mrs. Gascogne was practising 
 her Sunday voluntary, and the stairs were trembling with the 
 vibrations of the organ ; it was a Largo of Bach's, and 
 Pamela would infinitely have preferred to listen to it than 
 to lend a polite ear to Charlotte's less tuneful but equally re- 
 verberating voice. 
 
128 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 " I think I mentioned to you, Miss Dysart, that I have to 
 go to Dublin next week for three or four days ; teeth, you 
 know, teeth not that I suppose you have any experience of 
 such miseries yet ! " 
 
 Pamela did not remember, nor, beyond a sympathetic 
 smile, did she at first respond. Her attention had been 
 attracted by the dripping, deplorable countenance of Max, 
 which was pleading to her round the corner of the church 
 door for that sanctuary which he well knew to be eternally 
 denied to him. There had been a time in Max's youth 
 when he had gone regularly with Pamela to afternoon ser- 
 vice, lying in a corner of the gallery in discreet slumber. 
 But as he emerged from puppydom he had developed habits 
 of snoring and scratching which had betrayed his presence 
 to Mrs. Gascogne, and the climax had come one Sunday 
 morning when, in defiance of every regulation, he had flung 
 himself from the drawing-room window at Bruff, and followed 
 the carriage to the church, at such speed as his crooked legs 
 could compass. Finding the gallery door shut, he had made 
 his way nervously up the aisle until, when nearing the 
 chancel steps, he was so overcome with terror at the sight 
 of the surpliced figure of the Archdeacon sternly fulminating 
 the Commandments, that he had burst out into a loud fit of 
 hysterical barking. Pamela and the culprit had made an 
 abject visit to the Rectory next day, but the sentence of ex- 
 communication went forth, and Max's religious exercises 
 were thenceforth limited to the churchyard. But on this 
 unfriendly afternoon the sight of his long melancholy nose, 
 and ears dripping with rain, was too much for even Pamela's 
 rectitude. 
 
 "Oh, yes, teeth are horrible things," she murmured, 
 stealthily patting her waterproof in the manner known to all 
 dogs as a signal of encouragement. 
 
 " Horrible things ! Upon my word they are ! Beaks, 
 that's what we ought to have instead of them ! I declare I 
 don't know which is the worst, cutting your first set of teeth, 
 or your last ! But that's not what's distressing me most 
 about going to Dublin." 
 
 " Really," said Pamela, who, conscious that Max was now 
 securely hidden behind her petticoats, was able to give her 
 whole attention to Miss Mullen; "I hope it's nothing serious." 
 
The Real Charlotte. 129 
 
 " Well, Miss Dfsart," said Charlotte, with a sudden burst 
 of candour, " I'll tell you frankly what it is. I'm not easy 
 in my mind about leaving that girl by herself Francie y' 
 know she's very young, and I suppose I may as well tell 
 the truth, and say she's very pretty." She paused for the 
 confirmation that Pamela readily gave. "So you'll under- 
 stand now, Miss Dysart, that I feel anxious about leaving her 
 in a house by herself, and the reason I wanted to see you so 
 specially to-day was to ask if you'd do me a small favour, 
 which, being your mother's daughter, I'm sure you'll not re- 
 fuse." She looked up at Pamela, showing all her teeth. " I 
 want you to be the good angel that you always are, and 
 come in and look her up sometimes if you happen to be in 
 town." 
 
 The lengthened prelude to this modest request might 
 have indicated to a more subtle soul than Pamela's that 
 something weightier lay behind it ; but her grey eyes met 
 Miss Mullen's restless brown ones with nothing in them ex- 
 cept kindly surprise that it was such a little thing that she 
 had been asked to do. 
 
 " Of course I will," she answered ; " mamma and I will 
 have to come in about clearing away the rest of that awful 
 bazaar rubbish, and I shall be only too glad to come and 
 see her, and I hope she will come and lunch at Bruff some 
 day while you are away." 
 
 This was not quite what Charlotte was aiming at, but still 
 it was something. 
 
 " You're a true friend, Miss Dysart," she said gushingly, 
 " I knew you would be \ it'll only be for a few days, at all 
 events, that I'll bother you with me poor relation ! I'm 
 sure she'll be able to amuse herself in the evenings and 
 mornings quite well, though indeed, poor child, I'm afraid 
 she'll be lonely enough ! " 
 
 Mrs. Gascogne, putting on her gloves at the top of the 
 stairs, thought to herself that Charlotte Mullen might be 
 able to impose upon Pamela, but other people were not so 
 easily imposed on. She leaned over the staircase railing, 
 and said, " Are you aware, Pamela, that your trap is waiting 
 at the gate ? " Pamela got up, and Max, deprived of the 
 comfortable shelter of her skirts, crawled forth from under 
 the bench and sneaked out of the church door. " I 
 
130 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 wouldn't have that dog's conscience for a good deal," went 
 on Mrs. Gascogne as she came downstairs. " In fact, I am 
 beginning to think that the only people who get everything 
 they want are the people who have no consciences at 
 all." 
 
 " There's a pretty sentiment for a clergyman's wife ! " ex- 
 claimed Charlotte. " Wait till I see the Archdeacon and 
 ask him what sort of theology that is ! Now wasn't that the 
 very image of Mrs. Gascogne ? " she continued as Pamela 
 and she drove away ; " the best and the most religious 
 woman in the parish, but no one's able to say a sharper 
 thing when she likes, and you never know what heterodoxy 
 she'll let fly at you next ! " 
 
 The rain was over, and the birds were singing loudly in 
 the thick shrubs at Tally Ho as Pamela turned the roan 
 pony in at the gate ; the sun was already drawing a steamy 
 warmth from the be-puddled road, and the blue of the after- 
 noon sky was glowing freshly and purely behind a widening 
 proscenium of clouds. 
 
 " Now you might just as well come in and have a cup of 
 tea ; it's going to be a lovely evening after all, and I happen 
 to know there's a grand sponge-cake in the house." Thus 
 spoke Charlotte, with hospitable warmth, and Pamela per- 
 mitted herself to be persuaded. " It was Francie made it 
 herself; she'll be as proud as Punch at having you to " 
 Charlotte stopped short with her hand on the drawing-room 
 door, and then opened it abruptly. 
 
 There was no one to be seen, but on the table were two 
 half-empty cups of tea, and the new sponge-cake, reduced 
 by one-third, graced the centre of the board. Miss Mullen 
 glared round the room. A stifled giggle broke from the 
 corner behind the piano, and Francie's head appeared over 
 the top, instantly followed by that of Mr. Hawkins. 
 
 " We thought 'twas visitors when we heard the wheels," 
 said Miss Fitzpatrick, still laughing, but looking very much 
 ashamed of herself, " and we went to hide when they passed 
 the window for fear we'd be seen." She paused, not know- 
 ing what to say, and looked entreatingly at Pamela. " I 
 never thought it'd be you " 
 
 It was borne in on her suddenly that this was not the 
 manner in which Miss Dysart would have acted under 
 
The Real Charlotte 131 
 
 similar circumstances, and for the first time a doubt as to 
 the fitness of her social methods crossed her mind. 
 
 Pamela, as she drove home after tea, thought she under- 
 stood why it was that Miss Mullen did not wish her cousin 
 to be left to her own devices in Lismoyle. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THERE was no sound in the red gloom, except the steady 
 trickle of running water, and the anxious breathing of the 
 photographer. Christopher's long hands moved mysteri- 
 ously in the crimson light, among phials, baths, and cases of 
 negatives, while uncanny smells of various acids and com- 
 pounds thickened the atmosphere. Piles of old trunks 
 towered dimly in the corners, a superannuated sofa stood 
 on its head by the wall, with its broken hind-legs in the air, 
 three old ball skirts hung like ghosts of Bluebeard's wives 
 upon the door, from which, to Christopher's developing tap, 
 a narrow passage forced its angular way. 
 
 There was presently a step on the uncarpeted flight of 
 attic stairs, accompanied by a pattering of broad paws, and 
 Pamela, closely attended by the inevitable Max, slid with 
 due caution into the room. 
 
 " Well, Christopher," she began, sitting gingerly down 
 in the darkness on an old imperial, a relic of the period 
 when Sir Benjamin posted to Dublin in his own carriage, 
 " Mamma says she is to come ! " 
 
 " Lawks ! " said Christopher succinctly, after a pause 
 occupied by the emptying of one photographic bath into 
 another. 
 
 " Mamma said she * felt Charlotte Mullen's position so 
 keenly in having to leave that girl by herself, 1 " pursued 
 Pamela, " ' that it was only common charity to take her in 
 here while she was away.' " 
 
 "Well, my dear, and what are you going to do with 
 her ? " said Christopher cheerfully. 
 
 "Oh, I can't think," replied Pamela despairingly; "and 
 I know that Evelyn does not care about her ; only last 
 night she said she dressed like a doll at a bazaar." 
 
132 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 Christopher busied himself with his chemicals and said 
 nothing. 
 
 "The fact is, Christopher," went on his sister decisively, 
 " you will have to undertake her. Of course, I'll help you, 
 but I really cannot face the idea of entertaining both her 
 and Evelyn at the same time. Just imagine how they 
 would hate it." 
 
 " Let them hate it," said Christopher, with the crossness 
 of a good-natured person who feels that his good nature is 
 going to make him do a disagreeable thing. 
 
 " Ah, Christopher, be good ; it will only be for three 
 days, and she's very easy to talk to ; in fact," ended Pamela 
 apologetically, " I think I rather like her ! " 
 
 "Well, do you know," said Christopher, "the curious 
 thing is, that though I can't talk to her and she can't talk 
 to me, I rather like her, too when I'm at the other end of 
 the room." 
 
 " That's all very fine," returned Pamela dejectedly ; " it 
 may amuse you to study her through a telescope, but it 
 won't do anyone else much good ; after all, you are the 
 person who is really responsible for her being here. You 
 saved her life." 
 
 " I know I did," replied her brother irritably, staring at 
 the stumpy candle behind the red glass of the lantern, 
 unaware of the portentous effect of its light upon his eye- 
 glass, which shone like a ball of fire ; " that's much the 
 worst feature of the case. It creates a dreadful bond of 
 union. At that infernal bazaar, whenever I happened to 
 come within hail of her, Miss Mullen collected a crowd 
 and made a speech at us. I will say for her that she hid 
 with Hawkins as much as she could, and did her best to 
 keep out of my way. As I said before, I have no personal 
 objection to her, but I have no gift for competing with 
 young women. Why not have Hawkins to dinner every 
 night and to luncheon every day ? It's much the simplest 
 way of amusing her, and it will save me a great deal of 
 wear and tear that I don't feel equal to." 
 
 Pamela got up from the imperial. 
 
 " I hate you when you begin your nonsense of theorising 
 about yourself as if you were a mixture of Methuselah and 
 Diogenes ; I hare seen you making yourself just as agree- 
 
The Real Charlotte. 133 
 
 able to young women as Mr. Hawkins or anyone ; " she 
 paused at the door. " She'll be here the day after to- 
 morrow," with a sudden collapse into pathos. " Oh, Chris- 
 topher, you must help me to amuse her." 
 
 Two days afterwards Miss Mullen left for Dublin by the 
 early train, and in the course of the morning her cousin got 
 upon an outside car in company with her trunk, and em- 
 barked upon the preliminary stage of her visit to Bruff. 
 She was dressed in the attire which in her own mind she 
 specified as her " Sunday clothes," and as the car rattled 
 through Lismoyle, she put on a pair of new yellow silk 
 gloves with a confidence in their adequacy to the situation 
 that was almost touching. She felt a great need of their 
 support. Never since she was grown up had she gone on a 
 visit, except for a night or two to the Hemphills' summer 
 lodgings at Kingstown, when such " things " as she required 
 were conveyed under her arm in a brown paper parcel, and 
 she and the three Miss Hemphills had sociably slept in the 
 back drawing-room. She had been once at Bruff, a visit of 
 ceremony, when Lady Dysart only had been at home, and 
 she had sat and drunk her tea in unwonted silence, wishing 
 that there were sugar in it, but afraid to ask for it, and re- 
 specting Charlotte for the ease with which she accepted her 
 surroundings, and discoursed of high and difficult matters 
 with her hostess. It was only the thought of writing to her 
 Dublin friends to tell them of how she had stayed at Sir 
 Benjamin Dysart's place that really upheld her during the 
 drive ; no matter how terrible her experiences might be, the 
 fact would remain to her, sacred and unalterable. 
 
 Nevertheless, its consolations seemed very remote at the 
 moment when the car pulled up at the broad steps of Bruff, 
 and Gorman the butler came down them, and solemnly 
 assisted her to alight, while the setter and spaniel, who had 
 greeted her arrival with the usual official chorus of barking, 
 smelt round her politely but with extreme firmness. She 
 stood forlornly in the big cool hall, waiting till Gorman 
 should be pleased to conduct her to the drawing-room, 
 uncertain as to whether she ought to take off her coat, 
 uncertain what to do with her umbrella, uncertain of all 
 things except of her own ignorance. A white stone double 
 staircase rose overawingly at the end of the hall ; the floor 
 
134 ?Vk R*&t Charlotte. 
 
 under her feet was dark and slippery, and when she did 
 at length prepare to follow the butler, she felt that visiting 
 at grand houses was not as pleasant as it sounded. 
 
 A door into the hall suddenly opened, and there issued 
 from it the hobbling figure of an old man wearing a rusty 
 tall hat down over his ears, and followed by a cadaverous 
 attendant, who was holding an umbrella over the head of 
 his master, like a Siamese courtier. 
 
 " D n your eyes, James Canavan ! " said Sir Benjamin 
 Dysart, " can't you keep the rain off my new hat, you black- 
 guard ! " Then spying Francie, who was crossing the hall, 
 '* Ho-ho ! That's a fine girl, begad ! What's she doing in 
 my hall ? " 
 
 " Oh, hush, hush, Sir Benjamin ! " said James Canavan, 
 In tones of shocked propriety. "That is a young lady 
 visitor." 
 
 "Then she's my visitor," retorted Sir Benjamin, striking 
 his ponderous stick on the ground, " and a devilish pretty 
 visitor, too ! I'll drive her out in my carriage to-morrow." 
 
 " You will, Sir Benjamin, you will," answered his hench- 
 man, hurrying the master of the house along towards the 
 hall door ; while Francie, with a new and wholly unexpected 
 terror added to those she had brought with her, followed 
 the butler to the drawing-room. 
 
 It was a large room. Francie felt it to be the largest she 
 had ever been in, as she advanced round a screen, and saw 
 Lady Dysart at an immeasurable distance working at a heap 
 of dingy serge, and behind her, still further off, the well- 
 curled head of Miss Hope-Drummond just topping the 
 cushion of a low arm-chair. 
 
 "Oh, how do you do," said Lady Dysart, getting up 
 briskly, and dropping as she did so a large pair of scissors 
 and the child's frock at which she had been working. 
 " You are very good to have come over so early." 
 
 The geniality of Lady Dysart's manner might have assured 
 anyone less alarmed than her visitor that there was no ill 
 intention in this remark ; but such discernment was beyond 
 Francie. 
 
 " Miss Mullen told me to be over here by twelve, Lady 
 Dysart," she said abjectly, " and as she had the car ordered 
 for me I didn't like " 
 
The Real Charlotte. 135 
 
 Lady Dysart began to laugh, with the large and yet re- 
 fined bonhommie that was with her the substitute for tact. 
 
 " Why shouldn't you come early, my dear child ? " she 
 said, looking approvingly at Francie's embarrassed counten- 
 ance. " I'll tell Pamela you are here. Evelyn, don't you 
 know Miss Fitzpatrick ? " 
 
 Miss Hope-Drummond, thus adjured, raised herself 
 /anguidly from her chair, and shook hands with the new- 
 comer, as Lady Dysart strode from the room with her 
 customary business-like rapidity. Silence reigned for nearly 
 a minute after the door closed ; but at length Miss Hope- 
 Drummond braced herself to the exertion of being agree- 
 able. 
 
 " Very hot day, isn't it ? " looking at Francie's flushed 
 cheeks. 
 
 " It is indeed, roasting ! I was nearly melting with the 
 heat on the jaunting-car coming over," replied Francie, with 
 a desire to be as responsive as possible, " but it's lovely and 
 cool in here." 
 
 She looked at Miss Hope-Drummond's spotless white 
 gown, and wished she had not put on her Sunday terra- 
 cotta. 
 
 "Oh, is it?" 
 
 Silence ; during which Francie heard the wheels of her 
 car grinding away down the avenue, and wished that she 
 were on it. 
 
 " Have you been out on the lake much lately, Miss 
 Hope-Drummond ? " 
 
 Francie's wish was merely the laudable one of trying to 
 keep the heavy ball of conversation rolling, but the question 
 awoke a slumbering worm of discontent in her companion's 
 well-ordered breast. Christopher was even now loosing 
 from his moorings at the end of the park, without having 
 so much as mentioned that he was going out ; and Captain 
 Cursiter, her own compatriot, attached almost linked to 
 her by the bonds of mutual acquaintances, and her thorough 
 knowledge of the Lincolnshire Cursiters, had not risen to 
 the fly that she had only yesterday thrown over him on the 
 subject of the steam-launch. 
 
 " No ; I had rather more than I cared for the last time 
 we were out, the day of the picnic. I've had neuralgia in 
 
136 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 my face ever since that evening, we were all kept out so 
 late." 
 
 " Oh, my ! That neuralgia's a horrid thing," said Francie 
 sympathetically. " I didn't get any harm out of it with all 
 the wetting and the knock oo my head and everything. I 
 thought it was lovely fun ! But " forgetting her shyness in 
 the interest of the moment " Mr. Hawkins told me that 
 Cursiter said to him the world wouldn't get him to take out 
 ladies in his boat again ! " 
 
 Miss Hope-Drummond raised her dark eyebrows. 
 
 " Really ? That is very crushing of Captain Cursiter." 
 
 Francie felt in a moment an emphasis on the word 
 Captain ; but tried to ignore her own confusion. 
 
 " It doesn't crush me, I can tell you ! I wouldn't give a 
 pin to go in his old boat. I'd twice sooner go in a yacht, 
 upsets and all 1 " 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 Miss Hope-Drummond said no more than this, but her 
 tone was sufficient. Her eyes strayed towards the book 
 that lay in her lap, and the finger inserted in its pages 
 showed, as if unconsciously, a tendency to open it again. 
 
 There was another silence, during which Francie studied 
 the dark and unintelligible oil-paintings on the expanses of 
 wall, the flowers, arranged with such easy and careless 
 lavishness in strange and innumerable jars and vases ; and 
 lastly, Dinah, in a distant window, catching and eating flies 
 with disgusting avidity. She felt as if her petticoats showed 
 her boots more than was desirable, that her gloves were of 
 too brilliant a tint, and that she ought to have left her 
 umbrella in the hall. At this painful stage of her reflections 
 she heard Lady Dysart's incautious voice outside : 
 
 " It's always the way with Christopher ; he digs a hole 
 and buries himself in it whenever he's wanted. Take her 
 out and let her eat strawberries now ; and then in the 
 afternoon " the voice suddenly sank as if in response to 
 an admonition, and Francie's already faint heart sank along 
 with it. Oh, to be at the Hemphills, making toffee on the 
 parlour fire, remote from the glories and sufferings of 
 aristocratic houses ! The next moment she was shaking 
 hands with Pamela, and becoming gradually aware that she 
 was in an atmosphere of ease and friendliness, much as the 
 
The Real Charlotte. 137 
 
 slow pleasure of a perfume makes itself slowly felt. The 
 fact that Pamela had on a grass hat of sunburnt maturity, 
 and a skirt which bore the imprint of dogs' paws was in 
 itself reassuring, and as they went together down a shrubbery 
 walk, and finally settled upon the strawberry beds in the 
 tfide, fragrant kitchen-garden, the first terrors began to 
 subside in Francie's trembling soul, and she found herself 
 breathing more naturally in this strange, rarefied condition 
 of things. Even luncheon was less formidable than she had 
 expected. Christopher was not there, the dreaded Sir 
 Benjamin was not there, and Lady Dysart consulted her 
 about the cutting-out of poor clothes, and accepted with an 
 almost alarming enthusiasm the suggestions that Francie 
 diffidently brought up from the depths of past experience of 
 the Fitzpatrick wardrobe. 
 
 The long, unusual leisure of the afternoon passed by her 
 like a pleasant dream, in which, as she sat in a basket-chair 
 under the verandah outside the drawing-room windows, 
 illustrated papers, American magazines, the snoring lethargy 
 of the dogs, and the warm life and stillness of the air were 
 about equally blended. Miss Hope-Drummond lay aloof 
 in a hammock under a horse-chestnut tree at the end of the 
 flower-garden, working at the strip of Russian embroidery 
 that some day was to languish neglected on the stall of an 
 English bazaar ; Francie had seen her trail forth with her 
 arms full of cushions, and dimly divined that her fellow- 
 guest was hardly tolerating the hours that were to her like 
 fragments collected from all the holidays she had ever 
 known. No wonder, she thought, that Pamela wore a brow 
 of such serenity, when days like this were her ordinary 
 portion. Five o'clock came, and with it, with the majestic 
 punctuality of a heavenly body, came Gorman and the tea 
 equipage, attended by his satellite, William, bearing the tea- 
 table. Francie had never heard the word idyllic, but the 
 feeling that it generally conveys came to her as she lay back 
 in her chair,,, and saw the roses swaying about the pillars of 
 the verandah, and watched the clots of cream sliding into 
 her cup over the broad lip of the cream jug, and thought 
 how incredibly brilliant the silver was, and that Miss 
 Dysart's hands looked awfully pretty while she was pouring 
 out tea, and weren't a bit spoiled by being rather brown. 
 
138 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 It was consolatory that Miss Hope-Drummond had elected 
 to have her tea conveyed to her in the hammock ; it was 
 too much trouble to get out of it, she called, in her shrill, 
 languid voice, and no one had argued the matter with her. 
 Lady Dysart, who had occupied herself during the afternoon 
 in visiting the garden-beds and giving a species of clinical 
 lecture on each to the wholly unimpressed gardener, had 
 subsided into a chair beside Francie, and began to discuss 
 with her the evangelical preachers of Dublin, a mark of con- 
 fidence and esteem which Pamela noticed with astonish- 
 ment. Francie had got to her second cup of tea, and had 
 evinced an edifying familiarity with Lady Dysart's most 
 chosen divines, when the dogs, who had been seated 
 opposite Pamela, following with lambent eyes the passage 
 of each morsel to her lips, rushed from the verandah, and 
 charged with furious barkings across the garden and down 
 the lawn towards two figures, whom in their hearts they 
 knew to be the sons of the house, but whom, for histrionic 
 purposes, they affected to regard as dangerous strangers. 
 
 Miss Hope-Drummond sat up in her hammock and 
 pinned her hat on straight. 
 
 " Mr. Dysart," she called, as Christopher and Garry 
 neared her chestnut tree, " you've just come in time to get 
 me another cup of tea." 
 
 Christopher dived under the chestnut branches, and 
 presently, with what Miss Hope-Drummond felt to be un- 
 exampled stupidity, returned with it, but without his own. 
 He had even the gaucherie to commend her choice of the 
 hammock, and having done so, to turn and walk back to 
 the verandah, and Miss Hope-Drummond asked herself for 
 the hundredth time how the Castlemores could have put up 
 with him. 
 
 " I met the soldiers out on the lake to-day," Christopher 
 remarked as he sat down ; " I told them to come and dine 
 to-morrow." He looked at Pamela with an eye that chal- 
 lenged her gratitude, but before she could reply, Garry in- 
 terposed in tones muffled by cake. 
 
 " He did, the beast ; and he might have remembered it 
 was my birthday, and the charades and everything." 
 
 " Oh, Garry, must we have charades ? " said Pamela la- 
 mentably. 
 
The Real Charlotte. 139 
 
 " Well, of course we must, you fool," returned Garry with 
 Scriptural directness ; " I've told all the men about the 
 place, and Kitty Gascogne's coming to act, and James 
 Canavan's going to put papa to bed early and help us ' 
 Garry's voice sank to the fluent complaining undertone that 
 distinguishes a small boy with a grievance, and Christopher 
 turned to his mother's guest. 
 
 " I suppose you've acted in charades, Miss Fitzpatrick ? " 
 
 " Is it me act ? Oh goodness, no, Mr. Dysart ! I never 
 did such a thing but once, when I had to read Lady Mac- 
 beth's part at school, and I thought I'd died laughing the 
 whole time." 
 
 Pamela and Lady Dysart exchanged glances as they 
 laughed at this reminiscence. Would Christopher ever talk 
 to a girl with a voice like this ? was the interpretation of 
 Pamela's glance, while Lady Dysart's was a mere note of 
 admiration for the way that the sunlight caught the curls on 
 Francie's forehead as she sat up to speak to Christopher, 
 and for the colour that had risen in her cheeks since his 
 arrival, more especially since his announcement that Captain 
 Cursiter and Mr. Hawkins were coming to dinner. There 
 are few women who can avoid some slight change of manner 
 and even of appearance, when a man is added to the com- 
 pany, and it may at once be said that Francie was far 
 from trying to repress her increased interest on such an 
 occasion. 
 
 " What made you think I could act, Mr. Dysart ? " she 
 said, looking at him a little self-consciously ; " do you think 
 I look like an actress ? " 
 
 The question was interrupted by a cry from the chestnut 
 tree, and Miss Hope-Drummond's voice was heard appeal- 
 ing to someone to come and help her out of the ham- 
 mock. 
 
 " She can get out jolly well by herself," remarked Garry, 
 but Christopher got up and lounged across the grass in re- 
 sponse to the summons, and Francie's question remained 
 unanswered. Lady Dysart rose too, and watched her son 
 helping Miss Hope-Drummond on to her feet, and strolling 
 away with her in the direction of the shrubbery. Then she 
 turned to Francie. 
 
 " Now. Miss Fitzpatrick, you shall come and explain that 
 
140 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 Dorcas Society sleeve to me, and I should not be surprised 
 if you could help me with the acrostic." 
 
 Lady Dysart considered herself to be, before all things, a 
 diplomatist. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 DINNER was over. Gorman was regaling his fellows in the 
 servants' hall with an account of how Miss Fitzpatrick had 
 eaten her curry with a knife and fork, and her Scotch wood- 
 cock with a spoon, and how she had accepted every variety 
 of wine that he had offered her, and taken only a mouthful 
 of each, an eccentricity of which William was even now 
 reaping the benefit in the pantry. Mrs. Brady, the cook, 
 dared say that by all accounts it was the first time the poor 
 child had seen a bit served the way it would be fit to put 
 into a Christian's mouth, and, indeed, it was little she'd 
 learn of behaviour or dinners from Miss Mullen, except to 
 make up messes for them dirty cats a remark which ob- 
 tained great acceptance from her audiencei Mr. Gorman 
 then gave it as his opinion that Miss Fitzpatrick was as fine 
 a girl as you'd meet between this and Dublin, and if he was 
 Mr. Christopher, he'd prefer her to Miss Hope-Drummond, 
 even though the latter might be hung down with diamonds. 
 The object of this criticism was meantime congratulating 
 herself that she had accomplished the last and most dreaded 
 of the day's ceremonies, and, so far as she knew, had gone 
 through it without disaster. She certainly felt as if she 
 never had eaten so much in her life, and she thought to 
 herself that, taking into consideration the mental anxiety 
 and the loss of time involved in the consumption of one of 
 these grand dinners, she infinitely preferred the tea and 
 poached eggs which formed her ordinary repast. Pamela 
 was at the piano, looking a long way off in the dim pink 
 light of the shaded room, and was playing such strange 
 music as Francie had never heard before, and secretly hoped 
 never to hear again. She had always believed herself to be 
 extremely fond of music, and was wont to feel very senti- 
 mental when she and one of that tribe whom it is to be 
 feared she spoke of as her " fellows," sat on the rocks at the 
 
The Real Charlotte. 141 
 
 back of Kingstown pier and listened to the band playing 
 " Dorothy," or " The Lost Chord/' in the dark of the 
 summer evening ; but these minor murmurings, that seemed 
 to pass by steep and painful chromatic paths from one woe 
 to another, were to her merely exercises of varying difficulty 
 and ugliness, in which Miss Dysart never seemed to get the 
 chords quite right. She was too shy to get up and search 
 for amusement among the books and papers upon a remote 
 table, and accordingly she lay back in her chair and regarded 
 Lady Dysart and Miss Hope-Drummond, both comfortably 
 absorbed in conversation, and wondered whether she 
 should ever have money enough to buy herself a tea- 
 gown. 
 
 The door opened, and Christopher sauntered in ; he 
 looked round the room through his eye-glass, and then 
 wandered towards the piano, where he sat down beside 
 Pamela. Francie viewed this proceeding with less resent- 
 ment than if he had been any other man in the world ; she 
 did not so much mind a neglect in which Miss Hope- 
 Drummond was equally involved, and she was rather fright- 
 ened than otherwise, when soon afterwards she saw him, in 
 evident obedience to a hint from his sister, get up and come 
 towards her with a large photograph-book under his arm. 
 He sat down beside her, and, with what Pamela, watching 
 from the distant piano, felt to be touching docility, began to 
 expound its contents to her. He had done this thing so 
 often before, and he knew, or thought he knew so well what 
 people were going to say, that nothing but the unfailing 
 proprietary interest in his own handiwork supported him on 
 these occasions. He had not, however, turned many pages 
 before he found that Francie's comments were by no means 
 of the ordinary tepid and perfunctory sort. The Oxford 
 chapels were, it is true, surveyed by her in anxious silence ; 
 but a crowd of undergraduates leaning over a bridge to look 
 at an eight an instantaneous photograph of a bump- race, 
 with its running accompaniment of maniacs on the bank 
 Christopher's room, with Dinah sitting in his armchair with 
 a pipe in her mouth were all examined and discussed with 
 fervid interest, and a cry of unfeigned excitement greeted 
 the page on which his own photography made its delmi with 
 a deep-brown portrait of Pamela. 
 
142 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 " Mercy on us ! That's not Miss Dysart ! What has she 
 her face blackened for ? " 
 
 " Oh, I did that when I didn't know much about it last 
 winter, and it's rather over-exposed," answered Christopher, 
 regarding his work of art with a lenient parental eye. 
 
 " The poor thing ! And was it the cold turned her black 
 that way ? " 
 
 Christopher glanced at his companion's face to see whether 
 this ignorance was genuine, but before he had time to offer 
 the scientific explanation, she had pounced on a group 
 below. 
 
 " Why, isn't that the butler ? Goodness ! he's the dead 
 image of the Roman Emperors in Mangnall's questions ! 
 And who are all the other people ? I declare, one of 
 them's that queer man I saw in the hall with the old gentle- 
 man " She stopped and stammered as she realised that 
 she had touched on what must necessarily be a difficult 
 subject. 
 
 " Yes, this is a photograph of the servants," said Chris- 
 topher, filling the pause with compassionate speed, "and 
 that's James Canavan. You'll see him to-morrow night 
 taking a leading part in Garry's theatricals." 
 
 " Why, d'ye tell me that man can act ? " 
 
 " Act ? I should think so ! " he laughed, as if at some 
 recollection or other. "He can do anything he tries, or 
 thinks he can. He began by being a sort of hedge-school- 
 master, but he was too mad to stick to it. Anyhow, my 
 father took him up, and put him into the agency office, and 
 now he's his valet, and teaches Garry arithmetic when he's 
 at home, and writes poems and plays. I envy you your 
 first sight of James Canavan on the boards," he ended, 
 laughing again. 
 
 " The boards ! " Francie thought to herself, " I wonder 
 is it like a circus ? " 
 
 The photographs progressed serenely after this. Francie 
 began to learn something of the discreetness that must be 
 observed in inspecting amateur portrait photography, and 
 Christopher, on his side, found he was being better enter- 
 tained by Miss Mullen's cousin than he could have believed 
 possible. They turned page after page steadily and con- 
 versationally, until Christopher made a pause of unconscious 
 
The Real Charlotte. 143 
 
 pride and affection at a group of photographs of yachts in 
 different positions. 
 
 " These are some of the best I have," he said ; " that's 
 my boat, and that is Mr. Lambert's." 
 
 " Oh, the nasty thing ! I'm sure I don't want to see her 
 again ! and I shouldn't think you did either ! " with an un- 
 certain glance at him. It had seemed to her when, once or 
 twice before, she had spoken of the accident to him, that it 
 was a subject he did not care about. " Mr. Lambert says 
 that the upsetting wasn't her fault a bit, and he likes going 
 out in her just the same. I think he's a very brave man, 
 don't you?" 
 
 " Oh, very," replied Christopher perfunctorily ; " but he 
 rather overdoes it, I think, sometimes, and you know you 
 got the worst of that business." 
 
 " I think you must have had the worst of it," she said 
 timidly. " I never was able to half thank you " Even 
 the equalising glow from the pink lampshades could not 
 conceal the deepening of the colour in her cheeks. 
 
 " Oh, please don't try," interrupted Christopher, surprised 
 into a fellow-feeling of shyness, and hastily turning over the 
 yachting page ; " it was nothing at all." 
 
 " Indeed, I wanted to say it to you before," persevered 
 Francie, "that time at the bazaar, but there always were 
 people there. Charlotte told me that only for you the pike 
 would be eating me at the bottom of the lake ! " she ended 
 with a nervous laugh. 
 
 " What a very unpleasant thing to say, and not strictly 
 true," said Christopher lightly. "Do you recognise Miss 
 Mullen in this?" he went on, hurrying from the 
 subject. 
 
 " Oh, how pretty ! " cried Francie, peering into a small 
 and dark picture; "but I don't see Charlotte. It's the 
 waterfall in the grounds, isn't it ? " 
 
 Pamela looked over from the piano again, amazed to hear 
 her brother's voice raised in loud laughter. There was no 
 denying that the picture was like a waterfall, and Francie at 
 first rejected with scorn the explanation that it represented 
 a Sunday-school feast. 
 
 " Ah, go on, Mr. Dysart ! Why, I see the white water, 
 and the black rocks, and all 1 " 
 
144 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 "That's the table-cloth, and the black rocks are the 
 children's faces, and that's Miss Mullen." 
 
 " Well, I'm very glad you never took any Sunday-school 
 feast ever / was at, if that's what you make them look like." 
 
 " You don't mean to say you go to Sunday-school 
 feasts ? " 
 
 " Yes, why wouldn't I ? I never missed one till this year ; 
 they're the grandest fun out ! " 
 
 Christopher stared at her. He was not prepared for a re- 
 ligious aspect in Miss Mullen's remarkable young cousin. 
 
 " Do you teach in Sunday-schools ? " He tried to keep 
 the incredulity out of his voice, but Francie caught the 
 tone. 
 
 " You're very polite ! I suppose you think I know 
 nothing at all, but I can tell you I could say down all the 
 judges of Israel, or the journeyings of St. Paul this minute, 
 and that's more than you could do ! " 
 
 " By Jove, it is ! " answered Christopher, with another 
 laugh. "And is that what you talk about at school 
 feasts?" 
 
 Francie laid her head back on the cushion of her chair, 
 and looked at him from under her lowered eyelashes. 
 "Wouldn't you like to know?" she said. She suddenly 
 found that this evening she was not in the least afraid of 
 Mr. Dysart. There were some, notably Roddy Lambert, 
 ?rho called him a prig, but she said to herself that she'd tell 
 him as soon as she saw him that Mr. Dysart was a very nice 
 young man, and not a bit stuck-up. 
 
 u Very much," Christopher replied, sticking his eye-glass 
 into his eye, " that was why I asked." He really felt curious 
 to know more of this unwonted young creature, with her 
 ingenuous impudence and her lovely face. If anyone else 
 had said the things that she had said, he would have been 
 either bored or revolted, and it is possibly worth noting 
 that, concurrently with a nascent interest in Francie, he was 
 consciously surprised that he was neither bored nor revolted. 
 Perhaps it was the influence of the half-civilised northern 
 music that Pamela was playing, with its blood-stirring fresh- 
 ness, like the whistling wind of dawn, and its strange 
 snatches of winding sweetness, that woke some slumbering 
 part of him to a sense of her charm and youth. But Pamela 
 
The Real Charlotte. 145 
 
 guessed nothing of what Grieg's " Peer Gynt " was doing 
 for her brother, and only thought how gallantly he was 
 fulfilling her behest. 
 
 Before he said good-night to Francie, Christopher had 
 learned a good deal that he did not know before. He had 
 heard how she and Mr. Whitty, paraphrased as " a friend of 
 mine/' had got left behind on Bray Head, while the rest of 
 the Sunday-school excursion was being bundled into the 
 train, and how she and the friend had missed three trains, 
 from causes not thoroughly explained, and how Mr. Lambert, 
 who had gone there with her, just for the fuit of the thing, 
 had come back to look for them, and had found them 
 having tea in the station refreshment room, and had been 
 mad. He had heard also of her stay at Kingstown, and of 
 how a certain Miss Carrie Jemmison sister, as was ex- 
 plained, of another " friend " was wont to wake her up 
 early to go out bathing, by the simple expedient of pulling 
 a string which hung out of the bedroom window over the 
 the hall door, and led thence to Miss Fitzpatrick's couch, 
 where it was fastened to her foot ; in fact, by half-past ten 
 o'clock, he had gathered a surprisingly accurate idea of 
 Miss Fitzpatrick's manner of life, and had secretly been a 
 good deal taken aback by it. 
 
 He said to himself, as he smoked a final cigarette, that 
 she must be a nice girl somehow not to have been more 
 vulgar than she was, and she really must have a soul to be 
 saved. There was something about her some limpid 
 quality that kept her transparent and fresh like a running 
 stream, and cool, too, he thought, with a grin and with a 
 great deal of reflective stroking of Dinah's apathetic head, 
 as she lay on his uncomfortable lap trying to make the best 
 of a bad business. He had not failed to notice the 
 recurrence of Mr. Lambert's name in these recitals, and was 
 faintly surprised that he could not call to mind having 
 heard Miss Fitzpatrick mentioned by that gentleman until 
 just before her arrival in Lismoyle. Lambert was not 
 usually reticent about the young ladies of his acquaintance, 
 and from Francie's own showing he must have known her 
 very well indeed. He wondered how she came to be such 
 a friend of his ; Lambert was a first-rate man of business 
 and all that, but there was nothing else first-rate about him 
 
 IT 
 
146 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 that he could see. It showed the social poverty of the land 
 that she should speak of him with confidence and even 
 admiration ; it was almost pathetic that she should know no 
 better than to think Roddy Lambert a fine fellow. His 
 thoughts wandered to the upset of the Daphne; what an 
 ass Lambert had made of himself then. If she could know 
 how remarkably near her friend, Mr. Lambert, had come to 
 drowning her on that occasion, she would not, perhaps, 
 have quoted him so largely as a final opinion upon all 
 matters. No one blamed a man for not being able to swim, 
 but the fact that he was a bad swimmer was no excuse for 
 his losing his head and coming cursing and swearing and 
 doing his best to drown everyone else. 
 
 Christopher let Dinah slip on to the floor, and threw the 
 end of his cigarette out of the open window of his room. 
 He listened to the sleepy quacking of a wild-duck, and the 
 far-away barking of the gate-house dog. The trees loomed 
 darkly at the end of the garden ; between them glimmered 
 the pale ghost of the lake, streaked here and there with the 
 long quivering reflections of the stars, and in and through 
 the warm summer night, the darting flight of the bats wove 
 a phantom net before his eyes. The Grieg music still 
 throbbed an untiring measure in his head, and the thought 
 of Lambert gave way to more accustomed meditations. He 
 had leaned his elbows on the sill, and did not move till 
 some time afterwards, when a bat brushed his face with her 
 wings in an attempt to get into the lighted room. Then he 
 got up and yawned a rather dreary yawn. 
 
 " Well, the world's a very pretty place," he said to himself; 
 " it's a pity it doesn't seem to meet all the requirements of 
 the situation." 
 
 He was still young enough to forget at times the conven- 
 tionality of cynicism. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 LIEUTENANT GERALD HAWKINS surveyed his pink and 
 newly shaven face above his white tie and glistening shirt- 
 front with a smile of commendation. His moustache was 
 looking its best, and showing most conspicuous 1 ^ There 
 
The Real Charlotte. 147 
 
 was, at least, that advantage in a complexion that burned 
 red, he thought to himself, that it made a fair moustache 
 tell. In his button-hole was a yellow rose, given him by 
 Mrs. Gascogne on condition, as she said (metaphorically it 
 is to be presumed), that he "rubbed it well into Lady 
 Dysart " that she had no blossom to equal it in shape and 
 beauty. A gorgeous red' silk sachet with his initials em- 
 broidered in gold upon it lay on the table, and as he took a 
 handkerchief out of it his eye fell on an open letter that had 
 lain partially hidden beneath one side of the sachet. His 
 face fell perceptibly ; taking it up he looked through it 
 quickly, a petulant wrinkle appearing between his light 
 eyebrows. 
 
 " Hang it ! She ought to know I can't get any leave now 
 before the Twelfth, and then I'm booked to Glencairn. It's 
 all rot going on like this " He took the letter in both 
 hands as if to tear it up, but changing his mind, stuffed it in 
 among the pocket handkerchiefs, and hurried downstairs in 
 response to a shout from below. His polo-cart was at the 
 door, and in it sat Captain Cursiter, wearing an expression 
 of dismal patience that scarcely warranted Mr. Hawkins' 
 first remark. 
 
 " Well, you seem to be in a good deal of a hurry, old 
 chap. Is it your dinner or is it Hope-Drummond ? " 
 
 " When I'm asked to dinner at eight, I like to get there 
 before half-past," replied Cursiter sourly ; " and when you're 
 old enough to have sense you will too." 
 
 Mr. Hawkins drove at full pace out of the barrack gates 
 before he replied, " It's all very fine for you to talk as if 
 you were a thousand, Snipey, but, by George ! we're all 
 getting on a bit." His ingenuous brow clouded under the 
 peak of his cap, and his thoughts reverted to the letter that 
 he had thrust into the sachet. " I've been pretty young at 
 times, I admit, but that's the sort of thing that makes you a 
 lot older afterwards." 
 
 " Good thing, too/' put in Cursiter unsympathetically. 
 
 " Yes, by Jove ! " continued Mr. Hawkins ; " I've often 
 said I'd take a pull, and somehow it never came off, but 
 I'm dashed if I'm not going to do it this time." 
 
 Captain Cursiter held his peace, and waited for the con- 
 fidence that experience had told him would inevitably 
 
148 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 follow. It did not come quite in the shape in which he 
 had expected it. 
 
 " I suppose there isn't the remotest chance of my getting 
 any leave now, is there ? " 
 
 " No, not the faintest ; especially as you want to go away 
 for the Twelfth." 
 
 "Yes, I'm bound to go then," acknowledged Mr. 
 Hawkins with a sigh not unmixed with relief; "I suppose 
 I've just got to stay here." 
 
 Cursiter turned round and looked up at his young friend. 
 " What are you up to now ? " 
 
 " Don't be such an owl, Cursiter," responded Mr. 
 Hawkins testily; "why should there be anything up 
 because I want all the leave I can get? It's a very 
 common complaint." 
 
 "Yes, it's a very common complaint," replied Cursiter, 
 with a certain acidity in his voice that was not lost upon 
 Hawkins ; "but what gave it to you this time?" 
 
 " Oh, hang it all, Cursiter ! I know what you're driving 
 at well enough ; but you're wrong. You always think you're 
 the only man in the world who has any sense about women." 
 
 " I didn't think I had said anything about women," re- 
 turned the imperturbable Cursiter, secretly much amused at 
 the sensitiveness of Mr. Hawkins' conscience. 
 
 " Perhaps you didn't ; but you're always thinking about 
 them and imagining other people are doing the same," re- 
 torted Hawkins ; " and may I ask what my wanting leave 
 has to say to the question ? " 
 
 " You're in a funk," said Cursiter ; " though mind you," 
 he added, " I don't blame you for that." 
 
 Mr. Hawkins debated with himself for an instant, and a 
 confession as to the perturbed condition of that overworked 
 organ, his heart, trembled on his lips. He even turned 
 round to speak, but found something so discouraging to 
 confidence in the spare, brown face, with its uncompromis- 
 ingly bitten moustache and observant eyes, that the impulse 
 was checked. 
 
 " Since you seem to know so much about me and the 
 reasons why I want leave, and all the rest of it, I need 
 say no more." 
 
 Captain Cursiter laughed. "Oh ! don't on my account." 
 
The Real Charlotte. 149 
 
 Hawkins subsided into a dignified silence, which Cursiteff 
 as was his wont, did not attempt to break. He fell into 
 meditation on the drift of what had been said to him, and 
 thought that he would write to Greer (Greer was the ad- 
 jutant), and see about getting Hawkins away from Lismoyle; 
 and he was doing so well here, he grumbled mentally, and 
 getting so handy in the launch. If only this infernal Fitz- 
 patrick girl would have stayed with her cads in Dublin 
 everything would have been as right as rain. There was no 
 other woman here that signified except Miss Dysart, and it 
 didn't seem likely she'd look at him, though you never 
 could tell what a woman would or would not do. 
 
 Captain Cursiter was " getting on," as captains go, and he 
 was the less disposed to regard his junior's love affairs with 
 an indulgent eye, in that he had himself served a long and 
 difficult apprenticeship in such matters, and did not feel 
 that he had profited much by his experiences. It had 
 happened to him at an early age to enter ecstatically into 
 the house of bondage, and in it he had remained with eyes 
 gradually opening to its drawbacks, until, a few years before, 
 the death of the only apparent obstacle to his happiness had 
 brought him face to face with its realisation. Strange to 
 say, when this supreme moment arrived, Captain Cursiter 
 was disposed for further delay ; but it shows the contrariety 
 of human nature, that when he found himself superseded by 
 his own subaltern, an habitually inebriated viscount, instead 
 of feeling grateful to his preserver, he committed the im- 
 becility of horse-whipping him ; and finding it subsequently 
 advisable to leave his regiment, he exchanged into the in- 
 fantry with a settled conviction that all women were liars. 
 
 The coach-house at Bruff, though not apparently adapted 
 for theatrical purposes, had been for many years compelled 
 to that use by Garry Dysart, and when, at half-past nine 
 o'clock that night, Lady Dysart and her guests proceeded 
 thither, they found that it had been arranged to the best 
 possible advantage. The seats were few, and the carriages, 
 ranging from an ancestral yellow chariot to Pamela's pony- 
 trap, were drawn up for the use of the rest of the audience. 
 A dozen or so of the workmen and farm labourers lined the 
 walls in respectful silence ; and the servants of the house- 
 hold were divided between the outside car and the chariot. 
 
150 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 In front of a door leading to the harness-room, two clothes- 
 horses, draped with tablecloths, a long ottoman, once part 
 of the furniture of a pre-historic yacht of Sir Benjamin's, two 
 chairs, and a ladder, indicated the stage, and four stable- 
 lanterns on the floor served as footlights. Lady Dysart, the 
 Archdeacon, and Mrs. Gascogne sat in three chairs of 
 honour ; the landau was occupied by the rest of the party, 
 with the exception of Francie and Hawkins, who had 
 followed the others from the drawing-room at a little 
 distance. When they appeared, the coach-box of the 
 landau seemed their obvious destination ; but at the same 
 instant the wrangling voices of the actors in the harness- 
 room ceased, the play began, and when Pamela next 
 looked round neither Francie nor Mr. Hawkins was vis- 
 ible, and from the open window of an invalided brougham 
 that had been pushed into the background, came 
 sounds of laughter that sufficiently indicated their where- 
 abouts. 
 
 The most able and accustomed of dramatic critics would 
 falter in the attempt to master the leading idea of one of 
 Garry's entertainments ; so far as this performance made 
 itself intelligible, it consisted of nightmare snatches of 
 " Kenilworth," subordinated to the exigencies of stage 
 properties, chiefest among these being Sir Benjamin's 
 deputy-lieutenant's uniform. The sword and cocked hat 
 found their obvious wearer in the Earl of Leicester, and the 
 white plume had been yielded to Kitty Gascogne, whose 
 small crimson face grinned consciously beneath the limp 
 feathers. Lady Dysart's white bernouse was felt to confer 
 an air of simplicity appropriate to the part of Amy Robsart, 
 and its owner could not repress a groan as she realised that 
 the heroine would inevitably be consigned to the grimy 
 depths of the yacht ottoman, a receptacle long consecrated 
 to the office of stage tomb. At present, however, it was 
 employed as a sofa, on which sat Leicester and Amy, 
 engaged in an exhausting conversation on State matters, 
 the onus of which fell entirely upon the former, his com- 
 panion's part in it consisting mainly of a sustained giggle. 
 It presently became evident that even Garry was flagging, 
 and glances towards the door of the harness-room told that 
 expected relief delayed its coming. 
 
The Real Charlotte. 151 
 
 " He's getting a bit blown," remarked Mr. Hawkins from 
 the window of the brougham. " Go it, Leicester ! " 
 
 Garry's only reply was to rise and stalk towards the dooi 
 with a dignity somewhat impaired by the bagginess of the 
 silver-laced trousers. The deserted countess remained 
 facing the audience in an agony of embarrassment that 
 might have softened the heart of anyone except her lord, 
 whose direction, " Talk about Queen Elizabeth, you ass ! " 
 was audible to everyone in the coach-house. Fortunately 
 for Kitty Gascogne, her powers of soliloquy were not long 
 tested. The door burst open, Garry hurried back to the 
 ottoman, and had only time to seize Amy Robsart's hand 
 and kneel at her feet when a tall figure took the stage with 
 a mincing amble. James Canavan had from time immemo- 
 rial been the leading lady in Garry's theatricals, and his 
 appearance as Queen Elizabeth was such as to satisfy his 
 oldest admirers. He wore a skirt which was instantly 
 recognised by the household as belonging to Mrs. Brady 
 the cook, a crown made of gold paper inadequately re- 
 strained his iron-grey locks, a ham-frill ruff concealed his 
 whiskers, and the deputy-lieutenant's red coat, with the old- 
 fashioned long tails and silver epaulettes, completed his 
 equipment. 
 
 His entrance brought down the house ; even Lady Dysart 
 forgot her anxiety to find out where Mr. Hawkins' voice 
 had come from, and collapsed into a state afterwards de- 
 scribed by the under-housemaid as " her ladyship in splits." 
 
 " Oh fie, fie, fie ! " said Queen Elizabeth in a piping 
 falsetto, paying no heed to the demonstrations in her 
 favour ; " Amy Robsart and Leicester 1 Oh, dear, dear, 
 this will never do ! " 
 
 Leicester still stooped over Amy's hand, but even the 
 occupants of the brougham heard the whisper in which he 
 said, " You're not half angry enough ! Go on again ! " 
 
 Thus charged, Queen Elizabeth swept to the back of the 
 stage, and, turning there, advanced again upon the lovers, 
 stamping her feet and gesticulating with clenched fists. 
 " What ! Amy Robsart and Leicester ! Shocking ! dis- 
 graceful ! " she vociferated ; then with a final burst, " D n 
 it ! I can't stand this ! " 
 
 A roar of delight broke from the house ; the delight 
 
152 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 always provoked in rural audiences by the expletive that 
 age has been powerless to wither or custom to stale. Haw- 
 kins' amusement found vent in such a stentorian " Bravo ! " 
 that Lady Dysart turned quickly at the sound, and saw his 
 head and Francie's at the window of the brougham. Even 
 in the indifferent light of the lamps, Francie discerned dis- 
 approval in her look. She sat back precipitately. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Hawkins ! " she exclaimed, rashly admitting 
 that she felt the position to be equivocal ; " I think I'd 
 better get out." 
 
 Now, if ever, was the time for Mr. Hawkins to take that 
 pull of which he had spoken so stoutly to Captain Cursiter, 
 but in addition to other extenuating circumstances, it must 
 be admitted that Sir Benjamin's burgundy had to some 
 slight extent made summer hi his veins, and caused him to 
 forget most things except the fact that the prettiest girl he 
 had ever seen was sitting beside him. 
 
 " No, you sha'n't," he replied, leaning back out of the 
 light, and taking her hand as if to prevent her from moving ; 
 " you won't go, will you ? " 
 
 He suddenly felt that he was very much in love, and 
 threw such entreaty into the foregoing unremarkable words 
 that Francie's heart beat foolishly, and her efforts to take 
 away her hand were very feeble. 
 
 " You don't want to go away, do you ? You like sitting 
 here with me ? " 
 
 The powers of repartee that Tommy Whitty had often 
 found so baffling failed Francie unaccountably on this occa- 
 sion. She murmured something that Hawkins chose to take 
 for assent, and in a moment he had passed his arm round 
 her waist, and possessed himself of the other hand. 
 
 " Now, you see, you can't get away," he whispered, taking 
 a wary look out of the window of the brougham. All the 
 attention of the audience was engrossed upon the stage, 
 where, at this moment, Queen Elizabeth having chased 
 Amy and Leicester round the ottoman, was now doing her 
 best not to catch them as they together scaled the clothes- 
 horse. The brougham was behind everyone ; no one was 
 even thinking of them, and Hawkins leaned towards Francie 
 till his lips almost touched her cheek. She drew back from 
 him, but the kiss came and went in a moment, and was fol- 
 
The Real Charlotte. 153 
 
 lowed by more, that she did not try to escape. The loud 
 clapping of the audience on the exit of Queen Elizabeth 
 brought Hawkins back to his senses ; he heard the quick 
 drawing of Francie's breath and felt her tremble as he 
 pressed her to him, and he realised that so far from " taking 
 a pull," he had let himself get out of hand without a struggle. 
 For this rash, enchanting evening, at all events, it was too 
 late to try to recover lost ground. What could he do now 
 but hold her hand more tightly than before, and ask her un> 
 repentingly whether she forgave him. The reply met with 
 an unlooked-for interruption. 
 
 The drama on the stage had proceeded to its climax. 
 Amy Robsart was understood to have suffered a violent 
 death in the harness-room, and her entombment in the otto- 
 man had followed as a matter of course. The process had 
 been difficult ; in fact, but for surreptitious aid from the 
 corpse, the burial could scarcely have been accomplished ; but 
 the lid was at length closed, and the bereaved earl flung him- 
 self on his knees by the grave in an abandonment of grief. 
 Suddenly from the harness-room came sounds of discordant 
 triumph, and Queen Elizabeth bounded upon the stage, 
 singing a war-song, of which the refrain, 
 
 " With me long sword, saddle, bridle, 
 Whack, fol de rol 1 " 
 
 was alone intelligible. Amy Robsart's white plume was 
 stuck in the queen's crown in token of victory, and its 
 feathers rose on end as, with a flourish of the drawing-room 
 poker which she carried as her sceptre, she leaped upon the 
 grave, and continued her dance and song there. Clouds of 
 dust and feathers rose from the cushions, and encouraged 
 by the shouts of her audience, the queen's dance waxed 
 more furious. There was a stagger, a crash, and a shrill 
 scream rose from the corpse, as the lid gave way, and Queen 
 Elizabeth stood knee-deep in Amy Robsart's tomb. An 
 answering scream came from Mrs. Gascogne and Lady 
 Dysart, both of whom rushed from their places on to the 
 stage, and dragged forth the unhappy Kitty, smothered in 
 dust, redder in the face than ever, but unhurt, and still 
 giggling. 
 
154 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 Francie and Hawkins emerged from the brougham, and 
 mingled quietly with the crowd in the general break-up that 
 followed. The point at issue between them had not been 
 settled, but arrangements had been made for the following 
 day that ensured a renewal of the argument. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 THE crash of the prayer gong was the first thing that Francie 
 heard next morning. She had not gone to sleep easily the 
 night before. It had been so much pleasanter to lie awake, 
 that she had done so till she had got past the stage when 
 the process of going to sleep is voluntary, and she had 
 nearly exhausted the pleasant aspect of things and got to 
 their wrong side when the dawn stood at her window, a 
 pallid reminder of the day that was before her, and she 
 dropped into prosaic slumber. She came downstairs in a 
 state of some anxiety as to whether the chill that she had 
 perceived last night in Lady Dysart's demeanour would be 
 still apparent. Breakfast was nearly over when she got into 
 the room, and when she said good morning to Lady Dysart, 
 she felt, though she was not eminently perceptive of the 
 shades in a well-bred manner, that she had not been re- 
 stored to favour. 
 
 She sat down at the table, with the feeling that was very 
 familiar to her of being in disgrace, combating with the 
 excitement and hurry of her nerves in a way that made her 
 feel almost hysterical ; and the fear that the strong reveal- 
 ing light of the long windows opposite to which she was 
 sitting would show the dew of tears in her eyes, made her 
 bend her head over her plate and scarcely raise it to re- 
 spond to Pamela's good-natured efforts to put her at her 
 ease. Miss Hope-Drummond presently looked up from 
 her letters and took a quiet stare at the discomposed face 
 opposite to her. She had no particular dislike for Francie 
 beyond the ordinary rooted distrust which she felt as a 
 matter of course for those whom she regarded as fellow- 
 competitors, but on general principles she was pleased that 
 discomfiture had come to Miss Fitzpatrick. It occurred to 
 her that a deepening of the discomfiture would suit well 
 
The Real Charlotte. 155 
 
 with Lady Dysart's present mood, and might also be to her 
 own personal advantage. 
 
 " I hope your dress did not suffer last night, Miss Fitz- 
 patrick? Mine was ruined, but that was because Mr. 
 Dysart would make me climb on to the box for the last 
 scene." 
 
 "No, thank you, Miss Hope-Drummond at least, it 
 only got a little sign of dust." 
 
 " Really ? How nice ! How lucky you were, weren't 
 you ! " 
 
 " She may have been lucky about her dress," interrupted 
 Garry, " but I'm blowed if she could have seen much of 
 the acting ! Why on earth did you let Hawkins jam you 
 into that old brougham, Miss Fitzpatrick ? " 
 
 " Garry," said Lady Dysart with unusual asperity, " how 
 often am I to tell you not to speak of grown-up gentlemen 
 as if they were little boys like yourself? Run off to your 
 lessons. If you have finished, Miss Fitzpatrick," she con- 
 tinued, her voice chilling again, " I think we will go into 
 the drawing-room." 
 
 It is scarcely to be wondered at that Francie found the 
 atmosphere of the drawing-room rather oppressive. She 
 was exceedingly afraid of her hostess ; her sense of her 
 misdoings was, like a dog's, entirely shaped upon other 
 people's opinions, and depended in no way upon her own 
 conscience ; and she had now awakened to a belief that 
 she had transgressed very badly indeed. " And if she " 
 ("she" was Lady Dysart, and for the moment Francie's 
 standard of morality) " was so angry about me sitting in the 
 brougham with him," she thought to herself, as, having 
 escaped from the house, she wandered alone under the 
 oaks of the shady back avenue, " what would she think if 
 she knew the whole story ? " 
 
 In Francie's society " the whole story " would have been 
 listened to with extreme leniency, if not admiration ; in 
 fact, some episodes of a similar kind had before now been 
 confided by our young lady to Miss Fanny Hemphill, and 
 had even given her a certain standing in the eyes of that 
 arbiter of manners and morals. But on this, as on a previ- 
 ous occasion, she did not feel disposed to take Miss Hemp- 
 hill into her confidence. For one thing, she was less dis- 
 
156 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 tinct in her recollection of what had happened than was 
 usual. It had seemed to her that she had lost her wonted 
 clear and mocking remembrance of events from the mo- 
 ment when he had taken her hand, and what followed was 
 blurred in her memory as a landscape is blurred by the 
 quiver of heat in the air. For another, she felt it all to be 
 so improbable, so uncertain, that she could not quite 
 believe in it herself. Hawkins was so radically different 
 from any other man she had ever known \ so much more 
 splendid in all ways, the very texture of his clothes, the 
 scent on his handkerchief, breathed to her his high estate. 
 That she should have any part in this greatness was still a 
 little beyond belief, and as she walked softly in the deep 
 grass under the trees, she kept saying to herself that he 
 could not really care for her, that it was too good to be 
 true. 
 
 It was almost pathetic that this girl, with her wild-rose 
 freshness and vivid spring-like youth, should be humble 
 enough to think that she was not worthy of Mr. Hawkins, 
 and sophisticated enough to take his love-making as a 
 matter of common occurrence, that in no way involved any- 
 thing more serious. Whatever he might think about it, 
 however, she was certain that he would come here to-day, 
 and being wholly without the power of self-analysis, she 
 passed easily from such speculations to the simpler mental 
 exercise of counting how many hours would have to crawl 
 by before she could see him again. She had left the 
 avenue, and she strolled aimlessly across a wide marshy 
 place between the woods and the lake, that had once been 
 covered by the water, but was now so far reclaimed that 
 sedgy grass and bog-myrtle grew all over it, and creamy 
 meadow-sweet and magenta loose-strife glorified the swampy 
 patches and the edges of the drains. The pale azure of the 
 lake lay on her right hand, with, in the distance, two or 
 three white sails just tilted enough by the breeze to make 
 them look like acute accents, gaily emphasising the purpose 
 of the lake and giving it its final expression. In front of 
 her spread a long, low wood, temptingly cool and green, 
 with a gate pillared by tall fir-trees, from which, as she 
 lifted the latch, a bevy of wood-pigeons dashed out 
 startling her with the sudden frantic clapping of their wings 
 
The Real Charlotte. 157 
 
 It was a curious wood very old, judging by its scattered 
 knots of hoary, weather-twisted pine-trees ; very young, 
 judging by the growth of ash saplings and slender larches 
 that made dense every inch of space except where rides had 
 been cut through them for the woodcock shooting. Francie 
 walked along the quiet path, thinking little of the beauty 
 that surrounded her, but unconsciously absorbing its rich 
 harmonious stillness. The little grey rabbits did not hear 
 her coming, and hopped languidly across the path, " for all 
 the world like toys from Robinson's," thought Francie ; the 
 honeysuckle hung in delicious tangle from tree to tree ; the 
 wood-pigeons crooned shrilly in the fir-trees, and every now 
 and then a bumble-bee started from a clover blossom in the 
 grass with a deep resentful note, as when one plucks the 
 lowest string of a violoncello. She had noticed a triple 
 wheel-track over the moss and primrose leaves of the path, 
 and vaguely wondered what had brought it there ; but at a 
 turn where the path took a long bend to the lake she was 
 no longer left in doubt. Drawn up under a solemn pine- 
 tree near the water's edge was Sir Benjamin's bath-chair, 
 and in it the dreaded Sir Benjamin himself, vociferating at 
 the top of his cracked old voice, and shaking his oaken staff 
 at some person or persons not apparent 
 
 Francie's first instinct was flight, but before she had time 
 to turn, her host had seen her, and changing his tone of 
 fury to one of hideous affability he called to her to come 
 and speak to him. Francie was too uncertain as to the 
 exact extent of his intellect to risk disobedience, and she 
 advanced tremblingly. 
 
 " Come here, Miss," said Sir Benjamin, goggling at her 
 through his gold spectacles. "You're the pretty little 
 visitor, and I promised I'd take you out driving in my 
 carriage and pair. Come here and shake hands with me 
 Miss. Where's your manners ? " 
 
 This invitation was emphasised by a thump of his stick 
 on the floor of the chair, and Francie, with an almost 
 prayerful glance round for James Canavan, was reluctantly 
 preparing to comply with it, when she heard Garry's voice 
 calling her. 
 
 " Miss Fitzpatrick ! Hi ! Come here ! " 
 
 Miss Fitzpatrick took one look at the tremulous, irritable 
 
158 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 old claw outstretched for her acceptance, and plunged in- 
 continently down a ride in the direction of the voice. In 
 front of her stood a sombre ring of immense pine-trees, and 
 in their shadow stood Garry and James Canavan, apparently 
 in committee upon some small object that lay on the thick 
 mat of moss and pine-needles. 
 
 " I heard the governor talking to you," said Garry with a 
 grin of intelligence, "and I thought you'd sooner come and 
 look at the rat that's just come out of this hole. Stinking 
 Jemima's been in there for the last half hour after rabbits. 
 She's my ferret, you know, a regular ripper," he went on in 
 excited narration, "and I expect she's got the muzzle off 
 and is having a high old time. She's just bolted this 
 brute." 
 
 The brute in question was a young rat that lay panting 
 on its side, unable to move, with blood streaming from its 
 face. 
 
 " Oh ! the creature ! " exclaimed Francie with compas- 
 sionate disgust ; " what'll you do with it ? " 
 
 " I'll take it home and try and tame it," replied Garry ; 
 " it's quite young enough. Isn't it, Canavan ? " 
 
 James Canavan, funereal in his black coat and rusty tall 
 hat, was regarding the rat meditatively, and at the question 
 he picked up Garry's stick and balanced it in his hand. 
 
 " Voracious animals that we hate, 
 Cats, rats, and bats deserve their fate," 
 
 he said pompously, and immediately brought the stick 
 down on the rat's head with a determination that effectually 
 disposed of all plans for its future, educational or otherwise. 
 
 Garry and Francie cried out together, but James Canavan 
 turned his back unregardingly upon them and his victim, 
 and stalked back to Sir Benjamin, whose imprecations, 
 since Francie's escape, had been pleasantly audible. 
 
 " The old beast ! " said Garry, looking resentfully after 
 his late ally ; " you never know what he'll do next. I be- 
 lieve if mother hadn't been there last night, he'd have gone 
 on jumping on Kitty Gascogne till he killed her. By the 
 bye, Miss Fitzpatrick, Hawkins passed up the lake just 
 now, and he shouted out to me to say that he'd be at the 
 
The Real Charlotte. 159 
 
 turf-boat pier at four o'clock, and he hoped none of you 
 were going out." 
 
 Then he had not forgotten her ; he was going to keep his 
 word, thought Francie, with a leap of the heart, but further 
 thoughts were cut short by the sudden appearance of 
 Pamela, Christopher, and Miss Hope-Drummond at the end 
 of the ride. The treacherous slaughter of the rat was im- 
 mediately recounted to Pamela at full length by Garry, and 
 Miss Fitzpatrick addressed herself to Christopher. 
 
 " How sweet your woods are, Mr. Dysart," she began, 
 feeling that some speech of the kind was suitable to the 
 occasion. "I declare, I'd never be tired walking in them!" 
 
 Christopher was standing a little behind the others, look- 
 ing cool and lank in his flannels, and feeling a good deal 
 less interested in things in general than he appeared. He 
 had an agreeably craven habit of simulating enjoyment in 
 the society of whoever fate threw him in contact with, not 
 so much from a wish to please as from a politeness that had 
 in it an unworthy fear of exciting displeasure ; and so ably 
 had he played the part expected of him that Miss Hope- 
 Drummond had felt, as she strolled with him and his sister 
 through the sunshiny wood, that he really was far more in- 
 terested in her than she had given him credit for, and that 
 if that goose Pamela were not so officious in always pursuing 
 them about everywhere, they would have got on better still. 
 She did not trouble her brothers in this way, and the idea 
 that Mr. Dysart would not have come at all without his 
 sister did not occur to her. She was, therefore, by no means 
 pleased when she heard him suggest to Miss Fitzpatrick 
 that she should come and see the view from the point, and 
 saw them walk away in that direction without any reference 
 to the rest of the party. 
 
 Christopher himself could hardly have explained why he 
 did it. It is possible that he felt Francie's ingenuous, un- 
 affected vulgarity to be refreshing after the conversation in 
 which Miss Hope-Drummond's own especial tastes and 
 opinions had shed their philosophy upon a rechaujft of the 
 society papers, and recollections of Ascot and Hurlingham. 
 Perhaps also, after his discovery that Francie had a soul to 
 be saved, he resented the absolute possession that Hawkins 
 had taken of her the night before. Hawkins was a good 
 
160 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 little chap, but not the sort of person to develop a nascent 
 intellectuality, thought this sage of seven-and twenty. 
 
 "Why did you come out here by yourself?" he said to 
 her, some little time after they had left the others. 
 
 " And why shouldn't I ? " answered Francie, with the 
 pertness that seldom failed her, even when, as on this morn- 
 ing, she felt a little uninterested in every subject except one. 
 
 " Because it gave us the trouble of coming out to look 
 for you." 
 
 " To see I didn't get into mischief, I suppose ! " 
 
 " That hadn't occurred to me. Do you always get into 
 mischief when you go out by yourself ? " 
 
 " I would if I thought you were coming out to stop me ! " 
 
 " But why should I want to stop you ? " asked Christopher, 
 aware that this class of conversation was of a very undevelop- 
 ing character, but feeling unable to better it. 
 
 " Oh, I don't know ; I think everyone's always wanting 
 to stop me," replied Francie with a cheerful laugh ; " I 
 declare I think it's impossible for me to do anything right." 
 
 "Well, you don't seem to mind it very much," said 
 Christopher, the thought of how like she was to a typical 
 " June " in a Christmas Number striking him for the second 
 time ; " but perhaps that's because you're used to it." 
 
 " Oh, then, I can tell you I am used to it, but, indeed, I 
 don't like it any better for that." 
 
 There was a pause after this. They scrambled over the 
 sharp loose rocks, and between the stunted fir-trees of the 
 lake shore, until they gained a comparatively level tongue 
 of sandy gravel, on which the sinuous line of dead rushes 
 showed how high the fretful waves had thrust themselves in 
 winter. A glistening bay intervened between this point 
 and the promontory of Bruff, a bay dotted with the humped 
 backs of the rocks in the summer shallows, and striped with 
 dark green beds of rushes, among which the bald coots 
 dodged in and out with shrill metallic chirpings. Outside 
 Bruff Point the lake spread broad and mild, turned to a 
 translucent lavender grey by an idly-drifting cloud ; the slow 
 curve of the shore was followed by the woods, till the hay 
 fields of Lismoyle showed faintly beyond them, and, further 
 on, the rival towers of church and chapel gave a finish to 
 the landscape that not even conventionality could deprive 
 
The Real Charlotte. 161 
 
 of charm. Christopher knew every detail of it by heart. 
 He had often solaced himself with it when, as now, he had 
 led forth visitors to see the view, and had discerned their 
 boredom with a keenness that was the next thing to 
 sympathy ; he had lain there on quiet Autumn evenings, 
 and tried to put into fitting words the rapture and the 
 despair of the sunset, and had gone home wondering if his 
 emotions were not mere self-conscious platitudes, rather 
 more futile and contemptible than the unambitious adjec- 
 tives, or even the honest want of interest, of the average 
 sight-seer. He waited rather curiously to see whether Miss 
 Fitzpatrick's problematic soul would here utter itself. From 
 his position a little behind her he could observe her without 
 seeming to do so ; she was looking down the lake with a 
 more serious expression than he had yet seen on her face, 
 and when she turned suddenly towards him, there was a 
 wistfulness in her eyes that startled him. 
 
 " Mr. Dysart," she began, rather more shyly than usual ; 
 " d'ye know whose is that boat with the little sail, going 
 away down the lake now ? " 
 
 Christopher's mood received an unpleasant jar. 
 
 " That's Mr. Hawkins' punt," he replied shortly. 
 
 "Yes, I thought it was," said Francie, too much pre- 
 occupied to notice the flatness of her companion's tone. 
 
 There was another pause, and then she spoke again. 
 
 "Mr. Dysart, d'ye think would you mind telling me, 
 was Lady Dysart mad with me last night ? " She blushed 
 as she looked at him, and Christopher was much provoked 
 to feel that he also became red. 
 
 " Last night ? " he echoed in a tone of as lively perplexity 
 as he could manage ; " what do you mean ? Why should 
 my mother be angry with you ? " In his heart he knew 
 well that Lady Dysart had been, as Francie expressed it, 
 " mad." 
 
 " I know she was angry," pursued Francie. " I saw the 
 look she gave me when I was getting out of the brougham, 
 and then this morning she was angry too. I didn't think it 
 was any harm to sit in the brougham." 
 
 " No more it is. I've often seen her do it herself." 
 
 " Ah ! Mr. Dysart, I didn't think you'd make fun of me," 
 she said with an accent on the " you " that was flattering, 
 
 L 
 
162 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 but did not altogether please Christopher. " You know," 
 she went on, " I've never stayed in a house like this before. 
 I mean you're all so different " 
 
 " I think you must explain that remarkable statement," 
 said Christopher, becoming Johnsonian as was his wont 
 when he found himself in a difficulty. " It seems to me 
 we're even depressingly like ordinary human beings." 
 
 " You're different to me," said Francie in a low voice, 
 " and you know it well/' 
 
 The tears came to her eyes, and Christopher, who could 
 not know that this generality covered an aching thought of 
 Hawkins, was smitten with horrified self-questioning as to 
 whether anything he had said or done could have wounded 
 this girl, who was so much more observant and sensitive than 
 he could have believed. 
 
 " I can't let you say things like that," he said clumsily. 
 " If we are different from you, it is so much the worse for 
 us." 
 
 " You're trying to pay me a compliment now to get out 
 of it," said Francie, recovering herself; "isn't that just like 
 a man ? " 
 
 She felt, however, that she had given him pain, and the 
 knowledge seemed to bring him more within her compre- 
 hension. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THERE are few things that so stimulate life, both social and 
 vegetable, in a country neighbourhood, as the rivalry that 
 exists, sometimes unconfessed, sometimes bursting into an 
 open flame, among the garden owners of the district. The 
 Bruff garden was a little exalted and removed from such 
 competition, but the superiority had its depressing aspect 
 for Lady Dysart in that it was counted no credit to her to 
 excel her neighbours, although those neighbours took to 
 themselves the highest credit when they succeeded in 
 excelling her. Of all these Mr. Lambert was the one she 
 most feared and respected. He knew as well, if not better 
 than she, the joints in - the harness of Doolan the gardener, 
 the weak battalions in his army of bedding-out plants, the 
 failures in the ranks of his roses. Doolan himself, the 
 
The Real Charlotte. 163 
 
 despotic and self-confident, felt an inward qualm when he 
 saw Mr. Lambert strolling slowly through the garden with 
 her ladyship, as he was doing this very afternoon, his 
 observant eye taking in everything that Doolan would have 
 preferred that it should not take in, while he paid a fitting 
 attention to Lady Dysart's conversation. 
 
 " I cannot understand why these Victor Verdiers have 
 not better hearts," she was saying, with the dejection of a 
 clergyman disappointed in his flock. " Mrs. Waller told 
 me they were very greedy feeders, and so I gave them the 
 cleanings of the scullery drain , but they don't seem to care 
 for it. Doolan, of course, said Mrs. Waller was wrong, but 
 I should like to know what you thought about it." 
 
 Mr. Lambert delivered a diplomatic opinion, which 
 sufficiently coincided with Lady Dysart's views, and yet 
 kept her from feeling that she had been entirely in the 
 right. He prided himself as much on his knowledge of 
 women as of roses, and there were ultra feminine qualities 
 in Lady Dysart, which made her act up to his calculations 
 on almost every point. Pamela did not lend herself equally 
 well to his theories ; " she hasn't half the go of her mother. 
 She'd as soon talk to an old woman as to the smartest chap 
 in Ireland," was how he expressed the fine impalpable 
 barrier that he always felt between himself and Miss Dysart. 
 She was now exactly fulfilling this opinion by devoting her- 
 self to the entertainment of his wife, while the others were 
 amusing themselves down at the launch ; and being one of 
 those few who can go through unpleasant social duties with 
 " all grace, and not with half disdain hid under grace," not 
 even Lambert could guess that she desired anything more 
 agreeable. 
 
 " Isn't it disastrous that young Hynes is determined 
 upon going to America ? " remarked Lady Dysart presently, 
 as they left the garden; "just when he had learned 
 Doolan's ways, and Doolan is so hard to please." 
 
 " America is the curse of this country," responded Mr. 
 Lambert gloomily ; " the people are never easy till they get 
 there and make a bit of money, and then they come 
 swaggering back, saying Ireland's not fit to live in, and end 
 by setting up a public-house and drinking themselves to 
 death. They're sharp enough to know the only way of 
 
164 The Real Charlotte, 
 
 making money in Ireland is by selling drink." Lambert 
 spoke with the conviction of one who is sure, not only of 
 his facts, but of his hearer's sympathy. Then seeing his 
 way to a discussion of the matter that had brought him to 
 Bruff, he went on, " I assure you, Lady Dysart, the amount 
 of money that's spent in drink in Lismoyle would frighten 
 you. It's easy to know where the rent goes, and those that 
 aren't drunken are thriftless, and there isn't one of them 
 has the common honesty to give up their land when they've 
 ruined it and themselves. Now, there's that nice farm, 
 Gurthnamuckla, down by the lake-side, all going to moss 
 from being grazed year after year, and the house falling to 
 pieces for the want of looking after ; and as for paying her 
 rent " he broke off with a contemptuous laugh. 
 
 ( ' Oh, but what can you expect from that wretched old 
 Julia Duffy ? " said Lady Dysart good-naturedly ; " she's 
 too poor to keep the place in order." 
 
 "I can expect one thing of her," said Lambert, with 
 possibly a little more indignation than he felt ; " that she'd 
 pay up some of her arrears, or if she can't, that she'd go 
 out of the farm. I could get a tenant for it to-morrow 
 that would give me a good fine for it and put the house to 
 rights into the bargain." 
 
 " Of course, that would be an excellent thing, and I can 
 quite see that she ought to go," replied Lady Dysart, falling 
 away from her first position ; " but what would happen to 
 the poor old creature if she left Gurthnamuckla ? " 
 
 " That's just what your son says," replied Lambert with 
 an almost irrepressible impatience ; " he thinks she oughtn't 
 to be disturbed because of some promise that she says Sir 
 Benjamin made her, though there isn't a square inch of 
 paper to prove it. But I think there can be no doubt that 
 she'd be better and healthier out of that house ; she keeps 
 it like a pig-stye. Of course, as you say, the trouble is to 
 find some place to put her." 
 
 Lady Dysart turned upon him a face shining with the 
 light of inspiration, 
 
 "The back-lodge!" she said, with Delphic finality. "Let 
 her go into the back-lodge when Hynes goes out of it ! " 
 
 Mr. Lambert received this suggestion with as much 
 admiration as if he had not thought of it before. 
 
The Real Charlotte. 16$ 
 
 " By Jove ! Lady Dysart, I always say that you have a 
 better head on your shoulders than any one of us ! That's 
 a regular happy thought." 
 
 Any new scheme, no matter how revolutionary, was 
 sure to be viewed with interest, if not with favour, by Lady 
 Dysart, and if she happened to be its inventor, it was 
 endowed with virtues that only flourished more strongly in 
 the face of opposition. In a few minutes she had established 
 Miss Duffy in the back-lodge, with, for occupation, the care 
 of the incubator recently imported to Bruff, and hitherto a 
 failure except as a cooking-stove ; and for support, the milk 
 of a goat that should be chained to a laurel at the back of 
 the lodge, and fed by hand. While these details were still 
 being expanded, there broke upon the air a series of shrill, 
 discordant whistles, coming from the direction of the 
 lake. 
 
 " Good heavens ! " ejaculated Lady Dysart. " What 
 can that be ? Something must be happening to the steam- 
 launch ; it sounds as if it were in danger ! " 
 
 " It's more likely to be Hawkins playing the fool," 
 replied Lambert ill-temperedly. " I saw him on the launch 
 with Miss Fitzpatrick just after we left the pier." 
 
 Lady Dysart said nothing, but her expression changed 
 with such dramatic swiftness from vivid alarm to disapproval, 
 that her mental attitude was as evident as if she had 
 spoken. 
 
 " Hawkins is very popular in Lismoyle," observed Lam- 
 bert, trepidly. 
 
 "That I can very well understand," said Lady Dysart, 
 opening her parasol with an abruptness that showed annoy- 
 ance, " since he takes so much trouble to make himself 
 agreeable to the Lismoyle young ladies." 
 
 Another outburst of jerky, amateur whistles from the 
 steam launch gave emphasis to the remark. 
 
 "Oh, the trouble's a pleasure," said Lambert acidly. 
 "I hope the pleasure won't be a trouble to the young ladies 
 one of these days." 
 
 "Why, what do you mean?" cried Lady Dysart, much 
 interested. 
 
 " Oh, nothing," said Lambert, with a laugh, " except that 
 he's been known to love and ride away before now." 
 
166 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 He had no particular object in lowering Hawkins in Lady 
 Dysart's eyes, beyond the fact that it was an outlet for his in- 
 dignation at Francie's behaviour in leaving him, her oldest 
 friend, to go and make a common laughing-stock of herself 
 with that young puppy, which was the form in which the 
 position shaped itself in his angry mind. He almost de- 
 cided to tell Lady Dysart the episode of the Limerick 
 tobacconist's daughter, when they saw Miss Hope-Drummond 
 and Captain Cursiter coming up the shrubbery path towards 
 them, and he was obliged to defer it to a better occasion. 
 
 " What was all that whistling about, Captain Cursiter?" 
 asked Lady Dysart, with a certain vicarious severity 
 
 Captain Cursiter seemed indisposed for discussion. " Mr. 
 Hawkins was trying the whistle, I think," he replied with 
 equal severity. 
 
 " Oh, yes, Lady Dysart ! " broke in Miss Hope- 
 Drummond, apparently much amused ; " Mr. Hawkins has 
 nearly deafened us with that ridiculous whistle ; they would 
 go off down the lake, and when we called after them to ask 
 where they were going, and told them they would be late 
 for tea, they did nothing but whistle back at us in that 
 absurd way." 
 
 "Why? What? Who have gone? Whom do you 
 mean by they ? " Lady Dysart's handsome eyes shone like 
 stars as they roved in wide consternation from one speaker 
 to another. 
 
 " Miss Fitzpatrick and Mr. Hawkins ! " responded Miss 
 Hope-Drummond with childlike gaiety ; " we were all talk- 
 ing on the pier, and we suddenly heard them calling out 
 ' good-bye ! ' And Mr. Hawkins said he couldn't stop the 
 boat, and off they went down the lake ! I don't know when 
 we shall see them again." 
 
 Lady Dysart's feelings found vent in a long-drawn groan. 
 " Not able to stop the boat ! Oh, Captain Cursiter, is there 
 any danger ? Shall I send a boat after them ? Oh, how I 
 wish this house was in the Desert of Sahara, 01 that that in- 
 tolerable lake was at the bottom of the sea ! " 
 
 This was not the first time that Captain Cursiter had been 
 called upon to calm Lady Dysart's anxieties in connection 
 with the lake, and he now unwillingly felt himself bound to 
 assure her that Hawkins thoroughly understood the manage- 
 
The Real Charlotte. 167 
 
 ment of the Serpoktte> that he would certainly be back in a 
 few minutes, and that in any case, the lake was as calm as 
 the conventional mill-pond. Inwardly he was cursing him- 
 self for having yielded to Hawkins in putting in to Bruff ; he 
 was furious with Francie for the vulgar liberties taken by her 
 with the steam-whistle, an instrument employed by all true 
 steam-launchers in the most abstemious way ; and lastly, he 
 was indignant with Hawkins for taking his boat without his 
 permission, and leaving him here, as isolated from all means 
 of escape, and as unprotected, as if his clothes had been 
 stolen while he was bathing. 
 
 The party proceeded moodily into the house, and, as 
 moodily, proceeded to partake of tea. It was just about the 
 time that Mrs. Lambert was asking that nice, kind Miss 
 Dysart for another cup of very weak tea " Hog-wash, in- 
 deed, as Mr. Lambert calls it w that the launch was sighted 
 by her proprietor crossing the open space of water beyond 
 Bruff Point, and heading for Lismoyle. Almost immediately 
 afterwards Mrs. Lambert received the look from her husband 
 which intimated that the time had arrived for her to take 
 her departure, and some instinct told her that it would be 
 advisable to relinquish the prospect of the second cup and 
 to go at once. 
 
 If Mr. Lambert's motive in hurrying back to Lismoyle was 
 the hope of finding the steam-launch there, his sending along 
 our friend the black mare, till her sleek sides were in a 
 lather of foam, was unavailing. As he drove on to the quay 
 the Serpolette was already steaming back to Bruff round the 
 first of the miniature headlands that jagged the shore, and 
 the good turkey-hen's twitterings on the situation received 
 even less attention than usual, as her lord pulled the mare's 
 head round and drove home to Rosemount. 
 
 The afternoon dragged wearily on at Bruff ; Lady Dysart's 
 mood alternating between anger and fright as dinner-time 
 came nearer and nearer and there was still no sign of the 
 launch. 
 
 " What will Charlotte Mullen say to me ? " she wailed, as 
 she went for the twentieth time to the window and saw no 
 sign of the runaways upon the lake vista that was visible 
 from it. She found small consolation in the other two 
 occupants of the drawing-room. Christopher, reading the 
 
1 68 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 newspaper with every appearance of absorbed interest, 
 treated the alternative theories of drowning or elopement 
 with optimistic indifference; and Miss Hope-Drummond, 
 while disclaiming any idea of either danger, dwelt on the 
 social aspect of the affair so ably as almost to reduce her 
 hostess to despair. Cursiter was down at the pier, seriously 
 debating with himself as to the advisability of rowing the 
 long four miles back to Lismoyle, and giving his opinion to 
 Mr. Hawkins in language that would, he hoped, surprise 
 even that bland and self-satisfied young gentleman. There 
 Pamela found him standing, as desolate as Sir Bedivere when 
 the Three Queens had carried away King Arthur in their 
 barge, and from thence she led him, acquiescing with sombre 
 politeness in the prospect of dining out for the second time 
 in one week, and wondering whether Providence would 
 again condemn him to sit next Miss Hope-Drummond, and 
 prattle to her about the Lincolnshire Cursiters. He felt as 
 if talking to Pamela would make the situation more endur- 
 able. She knew how to let a man alone, and when she did 
 talk she had something to say, and did not scream twaddle 
 at you like a peacock. These unamiable reflections will 
 serve to show the irritation of Captain Cursiter's mind, and 
 as he stalked into dinner with Lady Dysart, and found that 
 for her sake he had better make the best of his subaltern's 
 iniquity, he was a man much to be pitied. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 AT about this very time it so happened that Mr. Hawkins 
 was also beginning to be sorry for himself. The run to 
 Lismoyle had been capital fun, and though the steering and 
 the management of the machinery took up more of his 
 attention than he could have wished, he had found Francie's 
 society more delightful than ever. The posting of a letter, 
 which he had fortunately found in his pocket, had been the 
 pretext for the expedition, and both he and Francie 
 confidently believed that they would get back to Bruff at 
 al^out six o'clock. It is true that Mr. Hawkins received 
 rather a shock when, on arriving at Lismoyle, he found that 
 
The Real Charlotte. 169 
 
 it was already six o'clock, but he kept this to himself, and 
 lost no time in starting again for Bruff. 
 
 The excitement and hurry of the escapade had conspired, 
 with the practical business of steering and attending to the 
 various brass taps, to throw sentiment for a space into the 
 background, and that question as to whether forgiveness 
 should or should not be extended to him, hung enchant- 
 ingly on the horizon, as delightful and as seductive as the 
 blue islands that floated far away in the yellow haze of the 
 lowered sun. There was not a breath of wind, and the 
 Launch slit her way through tranquil, oily spaces of sky that 
 lay reflected deep in the water, and shaved the long rocky 
 points so close that they could see the stones at the bottom 
 looking like enormous cairngorms in the golden shallows. 
 
 " That was a near thing," remarked Mr. Hawkins com- 
 placently, as a slight grating sound told that they had 
 grazed one of these smooth-backed monsters. "Good 
 business old Snipey wasn't on board 1 " 
 
 " Well, I'll tell old Snipey on you the very minute I get 
 back!" 
 
 " Oh, you little horror ! " said Mr. Hawkins. 
 
 Both laughed at this brilliant retort, and Hawkins looked 
 down at her, where she sat near him, with an expression of 
 fondness that he did not take the least pains to conceal. 
 
 u Hang it ! you know," he said presently, " I'm sick of 
 holding this blooming wheel dead amidships ; I'll just 
 make it fast, and let her rip for a bit by herself." He 
 suited the action to the word, and came and sat down 
 beside her. 
 
 " Now you're going to drown me again, I suppose, the 
 way Mr. Lambert did," Francie said. She felt a sudden 
 trembling that was in no way caused by the danger of which 
 she had spoken ; she knew quite well why he had left the 
 wheel, and her heart stood still with the expectation of that 
 explanation that she knew was to come. 
 
 " So you think I want to drown you, do you ? " said 
 Hawkins, getting very close to her, and trying to look under 
 the wide brim of her hat. " Turn round and look me in 
 the face and say you're ashamed of yourself for thinking ot 
 such a thing." 
 
 " Go on to your steering," responded Francie, still look- 
 
170 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 ing down and wondering if he saw how her hands were 
 trembling, 
 
 ' But I'm not wanted to steer, and you do want me here, 
 don't you ? " replied Hawkins, his face flushing through the 
 sunburn as he leaned nearer to her, "and you know you 
 never told me last night if you were angry with me or 
 not." 
 
 "Well, I was." 
 
 "Ah, not very " A rather hot and nervous hand, 
 burned to an unromantic scarlet, turned her face upwards 
 against her will. " Not very?" he said again, looking into 
 her eyes, in which love lay helpless like a prisoner. 
 
 "Don't," said Francie, yielding the position, powerless, 
 indeed, to do otherwise. 
 
 Her delicate defeated face was drawn to his ; her young 
 soul rushed with it, and with passionate, innocent sincerity, 
 thought it had found heaven itself. Hawkins could not tell 
 how long it was before he heard again, as if in a dream, the 
 click-clicking of the machinery, and wondered, in the dazed 
 way of a person who is " coming to " after an anaesthetic, 
 how the boat was getting on. 
 
 " I must go back to the wheel, darling," he whispered in 
 the small ear that lay so close to his lips ; " I'm afraid we're 
 a little bit off the course." 
 
 As he spoke, his conscience reminded him that he him- 
 self had got a good deal off his course, but he put the 
 thought aside. The launch was duly making for the head- 
 land that separated them from Bruff, but Hawkins had not 
 reflected that in rounding the last point he had gone rather 
 nearer to it than was usual, and that he was consequently 
 inside the proper course. This, however, was an easy 
 matter to rectify, and he turned the Serpokttfs head out 
 towards the ordinary channel. A band of rushes lay 
 between him and it, and he steered wide of them to avoid 
 their parent shallow. Suddenly there was a dull shock, a 
 quiver ran through the launch, and Hawkins found himself 
 sitting abruptly on the india-rubber matting at Francie's 
 feet. The launch had run at full speed upon the soft, 
 muddy shallow that extended unconscionably far beyond 
 the bed of rushes, and her sharp nose was now digging it- 
 self deeper and deeper into the mud. Hawkins lost no 
 
The Real Charlotte. 171 
 
 time in reversing the engine, but by the time they had gone 
 full speed astern for five minutes, and had succeeded only 
 in lashing the water into a thick, pea-soupy foam all round 
 them, he began to feel exceedingly anxious as to their pro- 
 spects of getting off again. 
 
 " Well, we've been and gone and done it this time," he 
 said, with a laugh that had considerably more discomfiture 
 than mirth in it ; "I expect we've got to stay here till we're 
 taken off." 
 
 Francie looked all round the lake; not a boat was in 
 sight, not even a cottage on the shore from which they 
 might hope for help. She was standing up, pale, now that 
 the tide of excitement had ebbed a little, and shaken by a 
 giddy remembrance of that moment when the yacht heeled 
 over and flung her into blackness. 
 
 " I told you you were going to drown me," she said, 
 shivering and laughing together ; " and oh ! what in the 
 name of goodness will I say to Lady Dysart ? " 
 
 " Oh, we'll tell her it was an accident, and she won't say 
 a word," said Hawkins with more confidence than he felt. 
 " If the worst comes to the worst I'll swim ashore and get a 
 boat." 
 
 " Oh don't, don't ! you mustn't do that ! " she cried, 
 catching at his arm as if she already saw him jumping over- 
 board ; "I'd be frightened I couldn't bear to see you 
 don't go away from me ! " 
 
 Her voice failed pathetically, and, bared of all their wiles, 
 her eyes besought him through the tears of a woman's terror 
 and tenderness. Hawkins looked at her with a kind of 
 ecstacy. 
 
 " Do you care so much as all that," he said, " you silly 
 little thing ! " 
 
 After this there was nothing to be done except sit down 
 again, and with her head on his shoulder, allow that fatal 
 anaesthetic to rob him of all considerations beyond Francie's 
 kisses. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 DINNER at Bruff was over. It had been delayed as long as 
 possible in the belief that each moment would bring back 
 
i/2 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 the culprits, and it had dragged painfully through its eight 
 courses, in spite of Lady Dysart's efforts to hasten Gorman 
 and his satellite in their inexorable orbit. Everyone except 
 Garry and Miss Hope-Drummond had been possessed by 
 an anxiety which Lady Dysart alone had courage to express. 
 She indeed, being a person who habitually said what other 
 people were half afraid to think, had dilated on all possible 
 calamities till Cursiter, whose temper was momently be- 
 coming worse, many times wished himself on the lake, row- 
 ing dinnerless and vengeful on the track of the fugitives. 
 
 The whole party was now out of doors, and on its way 
 down to the landing-place, in the dark twilight ; Lady 
 Dysart coming last of all, and driving before her the much 
 incensed Gorman, whom she had armed with the gong, in 
 the idea that its warlike roar would be at once a guide and 
 a menace to the wanderers. So far it had only had the 
 effect of drawing together in horrified questioning all the 
 cattle in the lower part of the park, and causing them to 
 rush, bellowing, along by the railings that separated them 
 from the siren who cried to them with a voice so command- 
 ing and so mysterious. Gorman was fully alive to the in- 
 dignity of his position, and to the fact that Master Garry, 
 his ancient enemy, was mocking at his humiliation ; but 
 any attempt to moderate his attack upon the gong was de- 
 tected by his mistress. 
 
 " Go on, Gorman ! Beat it louder ! The more they 
 bellow the better; it will guide them into the landing-place." 
 
 Christopher's affected misapprehension of his mother's 
 pronouns created a diversion for some time, as it was per- 
 haps intended to do. He had set himself to treat the 
 whole affair with unsympathetic levity, but, in spite of him- 
 self, an insistent thorn of anxiety made it difficult for him to 
 make little of his mother's vigorous panic. It was absurd, 
 but her lamentations about the dangers of the lake and of 
 steam-launches found a hollow echo in his heart. He re- 
 membered, with a shudder that he had not felt at the time, 
 the white face rising and dipping in the trough of the grey 
 lake waves ; and though his sense of humour, and of the 
 supreme inadequacy and staleness of swearing, usually de- 
 prived him of that safety valve, he was conscious that in the 
 background of his mind the traditional adjective was mono- 
 
The Real Charlotte. 173 
 
 tonously coupling itself with the name of Mr. Hawkins. He 
 was walking behind the others down the path to the pier. 
 Here and there great trees that looked tired from their 
 weight of foliage stood patiently spreading their arms to the 
 dew, and in the intervals between Gorman's fantasias on 
 the gong, he could hear how the diffident airs from the lake 
 whispered confidentially to the sleeping leaves. There was 
 no moon ; the sky was thickened with a light cloudiness, 
 and in the mystical twilight the pale broad blossoms of an 
 elder-bush looked like constellated stars in a nearer and 
 darker firmament. Christopher walked on, that cold memory 
 of danger and disquiet jarring the fragrance and peace of 
 the rich summer night. 
 
 The searchers ranged themselves on the pier ; the gong 
 was stilled, and except for the occasional stamping of a hoof, 
 or low booming complaint from the cattle, there was perfect 
 silence. All were listening for some sound from the lake 
 before Christopher and Cursiter carried out their intention 
 of starting in a boat to look for the launch. Suddenly in 
 the misty darkness into which all were staring, a vivid spark 
 of light sprang out. It burned for a few seconds only, a 
 sharp distinct star, and then disappeared, 
 
 "There they are!" cried Lady Dysart. "The gong, 
 Gorman ! The gong ! " 
 
 Gorman sounded with a will, and the harsh, brazen blare 
 spread and rolled over the lake, but there was no response. 
 
 "They must hear that," said Cursiter to Christopher; 
 " why the devil don't he whistle ? " 
 
 " How should I know ? " answered Christopher, with a 
 crossness which was in some irrational way the outcome of 
 extreme relief; " I suppose he fooled with it till it broke." 
 
 "Perhaps they are not there after all," suggested Miss 
 Hope-Drummond cheerfully. 
 
 "How can you say such a thing, Evelyn!" exclaimed 
 Lady Dysart indignantly ; " I know it was they, and the 
 light was a signal of distress ! " 
 
 " More likely to have been Hawkins lighting a cigarette," 
 said Christopher ; " if everyone would stop talking at the 
 same time we might be able to hear something." 
 
 A question ran like a ripple through Pamela's mind 
 " What makes Christopher cross to-night ? " but the next in- 
 
174 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 stant she forgot it. A distant shout, unmistakably uttered 
 by Hawkins, came thinly to them across the water, and in 
 another second or two the noise of oars could be distinctly 
 heard. The sound advanced steadily. 
 
 " Show a light there on the pier ! " called out a voice that 
 was not Hawkins'. 
 
 Cursiter struck a match, a feeble illuminant that made 
 everything around invisible except the faces of the group on 
 the pier, and by the time it had been tossed, like a falling 
 star, into the tarry blackness of the water, the boat was within 
 conversational distance. 
 
 " Is Miss Fitzpatrick there ? " demanded Lady Dysart. 
 
 " She is," said Lambert's voice. 
 
 " What have you done with the launch ? " shouted. 
 Cursiter, in a tone that made his subaltern quake. 
 
 " She's all right," he made haste to reply. " She's on 
 that mud-shallow off Curragh Point, and Lambert's man is 
 on board her now. Lambert saw us aground there from his 
 window, and we were at her for an hour trying to get her off, 
 and then it got so dark, we thought we'd better leave her 
 and come on. She's all right, you know." 
 
 " Oh," said Captain Cursiter, in, as Hawkins thought to 
 himself, a deuced disagreeable voice. 
 
 The boat came up alongside of the pier, and in the 
 hubbub of inquiry that arose, Francie was conscious of a 
 great sense of protection in Lambert's presence, angry 
 though she knew he was. As he helped her out of the 
 boat, she whispered tremulously : 
 
 " It was awfully good of you to come." 
 
 He did not answer, and stepped at once into the boat 
 again. In another minute the necessary farewells had been 
 made, and he, Cursiter, and Hawkins, were rowing back to 
 the launch, leaving Francie to face her tribunal alone. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 IT was noon on the following day a soaking, windy noon. 
 Francie felt its fitness without being aware that she did so, 
 as she knelt in front of her trunk, stuffing her few fineries 
 into it with unscientific recklessness, and thinking with terror 
 
The Real Charlotte. 175 
 
 that it still remained for her to fee the elderly English upper 
 housemaid with the half-crown that Charlotte had diplomati- 
 cally given her for the purpose. 
 
 Everything had changed since yesterday, and changed 
 for the worse. The broad window, out of which yesterday 
 afternoon she had leaned in the burning sunshine to see the 
 steam-launch puffing her way up the lake, was now closed 
 against the rain ; the dirty flounces of her best white frock, 
 that had been clean yesterday, now thrust themselves out 
 from under the lid of her trunk in disreputable reminder of 
 last night's escapade ; and Lady Dysart, who had been at 
 all events moderately friendly yesterday, now evidently con- 
 sidered that Francie had transgressed beyond forgiveness, 
 and had acquiesced so readily in Francie's suggestion of 
 going home for luncheon, that her guest felt sorry that she 
 had not said breakfast. Even the padlock of her bonnet- 
 box refused to lock was " going bandy with her," as she 
 put it in a phrase learnt from the Fitzpatrick cook and she 
 was still battling with it when the sound of wheels on the 
 gravel warned her that the ordeal of farewell was at hand. 
 The blast calm with which Sarah helped her through the 
 presentation of Charlotte's half-crown made her feel her 
 social inferiority as keenly as the coldness of Lady Dysart's 
 adieux made her realise that she was going away in disgrace, 
 when she sought her hostess and tried to stammer out the 
 few words of orthodox gratitude that Charlotte had enjoined 
 her not to forget. 
 
 Pamela, whose sympathies were always with the sinner, 
 was kinder than ever, even anxiously kind, as Francie dimly 
 perceived, and in some unexpected way her kindness 
 brought a lump into the throat of the departing guest. 
 Francie hurried mutely out on to the steps, where, in spite 
 of the rain, the dogs and Christopher were waiting to bid 
 her good-bye. 
 
 " You are very punctual," he said. " I don't know why 
 you are in such a hurry to go away." 
 
 " Oh, I think you've had quite enough of me," Francie 
 replied with a desperate attempt at gaiety. " I'm sure 
 you're all very glad to be shut of me." 
 
 *' That isn't a kind thing to say, and I think you ought to 
 know that it is not true either." 
 
1 76 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 " Indeed then I know it is true," answered Francie, pre- 
 paring in her agitation to plunge into the recesses of the 
 landau without any further ceremonies of farewell. 
 
 " Well, won't you even shake hands with me ? " 
 
 She was already in the carriage ; but at this reproach she 
 thrust an impulsive hand out of the window. " Oh, 
 gracious ! I mean I beg your pardon, Mr. Dysart," she 
 cried incoherently, " I I'm awfully grateful for- all your 
 kindness, and to Miss Dysart " 
 
 She hardly noticed how tightly he held her hand in his ; 
 but, as she was driven away, and, looking back, saw him 
 and Pamela standing on the steps, the latter holding Max 
 in her arms, and waving one of his crooked paws in token 
 of farewell, she thought to herself that it must be only out 
 of good nature they were so friendly to her ; but anyhow 
 they were fearfully nice. 
 
 " Thank goodness ! " said Lady Dysart fervently, as she 
 moved away from the open hall-door " thank goodness 
 that responsibility is off my hands. I began by liking the 
 creature, but never, no, never, have I seen a girl so abomin- 
 ably brought up." 
 
 "Not much notion of the convenances, has she?" ob- 
 served Miss Hope-Drummond, who had descended from 
 her morning task of writing many letters in a tall, square 
 hand, just in time to enjoy the sight of Francie's departure, 
 without having the trouble of saying good-bye to her. 
 
 " Convenances / " echoed Lady Dysart, lifting her dark 
 eyes till nothing but the whites were visible ; " I don't 
 suppose she could tell you the meaning of the word. ' One 
 master passion in the breast, like Aaron's serpent, swallows 
 up the rest,' and of all the man-eaters I have ever seen, she 
 is the most cannibalistic ! " 
 
 Miss Hope-Drummond laughed in polite appreciation, 
 and rustled crisply away towards the drawing-room. Lady 
 Dysart looked approvingly after the tall, admirably neat 
 figure, and thought, with inevitable comparison, of Francie's 
 untidy hair, and uncertainly draped skirts. She turned to 
 Christopher and Pamela, and continued, with a lowered 
 voice : 
 
 " Do you know, even the servants are all talking about 
 her, Of course, they can't help noticing what goes on." 
 
The Real Charlotte. 177 
 
 Christopher looked at his mother with a singularly ex- 
 pressionless face. 
 
 " Gorman hasn't mentioned it to me yet, or William 
 either." 
 
 " If you had not interrupted me, Christopher," said poor 
 Lady Dysart, resentful of this irreproachably filial rebuke, 
 " I would have told you that none of the servants breathed 
 a word on the subject to me. Evelyn was told it by her 
 maid." 
 
 " How Evelyn can discuss such things with her maid, I 
 cannot imagine," said Pamela, with unwonted heat ; " and 
 Davis is such a particularly detestable woman." 
 
 " I do not care in the least what sort of woman she is, she 
 does hair beautifully, which is more than I can say for you," 
 replied Lady Dysart, with an Uhlan-like dash into the 
 enemy's country. 
 
 " I suppose it was by Davis' advice that Evelyn made a 
 point of ignoring Miss Fitzpatrick this whole morning," 
 continued Pamela, with the righteous wrath of a just 
 person. 
 
 " It was quite unnecessary for her to trouble herself," 
 broke in Lady Dysart witheringly ; " Christopher atoned 
 for all her deficiencies taking advantage of Mr. Hawkins' 
 absence, I suppose." 
 
 " If Hawkins had been there," said Christopher, with the 
 slowness that indicated that he was trying not to stammer, 
 " it would have saved me the trouble of making c conver- 
 sation for a person who did not care about it." 
 
 " You may make your mind easy on that point, my 
 dear ! " Lady Dysart shot this parting shaft after her son 
 as he turned away towards the smoking-room. " To do her 
 justice, I don't think she is in the least particular, so long 
 as she has a man to talk to ! " 
 
 It is not to be wondered at, that, as Francie drove 
 through Lismoyle, she felt that the atmosphere was laden 
 with reprobation of her and her conduct. 
 
 Her instinct told her that the accident to Captain 
 Cursiter's launch, and her connection with it, would be a 
 luscious topic of discourse for everyone, from Mrs. Lambert 
 downwards ; and the thought kept her from deriving full 
 satisfaction from the Bruff carriage and pair. Even when 
 
 M 
 
178 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 she saw Annie Beattie standing at her window with a duster 
 in her hand, the triumph of her position was blighted by the 
 reflection that if Charlotte did not know everything before 
 the afternoon was out, full details would be supplied to her 
 at the party to which on this very evening they had been 
 bidden by Mrs. Beattie. 
 
 The prospect of the cross-examination which she would 
 have to undergo grew in portentousness during the houi 
 and a half of waiting at Tally Ho for her cousin's return, 
 while, through and with her fears, the dirt and vulgarity of 
 the house and the furniture, the sickly familiarities of Louisa, 
 and the all-pervading smell of cats and cooking, impressed 
 themselves on her mind with a new and repellent vigour 
 But Charlotte, when she arrived, was evidently still in happy 
 ignorance of the events that would have interested her so 
 profoundly. Her Dublin dentist had done his spiriting 
 gently, her friends had been so hospitable that her lodging- 
 house breakfasts had been her only expense in the way of 
 meals, and the traditional battle with the Lismoyle car- 
 driver and his equally inevitable defeat had raised her spirits 
 so much that she accepted Francie's expurgated account 
 of her sojourn at Bruff with almost boisterous approval. 
 She even extended a jovial feeler in the direction of 
 Christopher. 
 
 " Well, now, after all the chances you've had, Francie, I'll 
 not give tuppence for you if you haven't Mr. Dysart at your 
 feet ! " 
 
 It was not usually Francie's way to object to jests of this 
 kind, but now she shrank from Charlotte's heavy hand. 
 
 " Oh, he was awfully kind," she said hurriedly ; " but I 
 don't think he'll ever want to marry anyone, not even Miss 
 Hope-Drummond, for all as hard as she's trying ! " 
 
 " Paugh ! Let her try ! ShJ\\ not get him, not if she 
 was to put her eyes on sticks ! But believe you me, child, 
 there never was a man yet that pretended he didn't want to 
 marry that wasn't dying for a wife I " 
 
 This statement demanded no reply, and Miss Mullen 
 departed to the kitchen to see the new kittens and to hold 
 high inquisition into the doings of the servants during her 
 absence. 
 
 Mrs. Beattie gave but two parties in the year one at 
 
The Real Charlotte. 179 
 
 Christmas, on account of the mistletoe ; and one in July, 
 on account of the raspberries, for which her garden was 
 justly famous. This, it need scarcely be said, was the rasp- 
 berry party, and accordingly when the afternoon had brought 
 a cessation of the drizzling rain, Miss Ada and Miss Flossie 
 Beattie might have been seen standing among the wet over- 
 arching raspberry canes, devoured by midges, scarlet from 
 the steamy heat, and pestered by that most maddening of 
 all created things, the common fly, but, nevertheless, filling 
 basket after basket with fruit. Miss May and Miss Carrie 
 spent a long and arduous day in the kitchen making tartlets, 
 brewing syrupy lemonade, and decorating cakes with pink 
 and white sugar devices and mottos archly stimulative of 
 conversation. Upon Mrs. Beattie and her two remaining 
 daughters devolved the task of arranging the drawing-room 
 chairs in a Christy minstrel circle, and borrowing extra tea- 
 cups from their obliging neighbour, Mrs. Lynch ; while Mr. 
 Beattie absented himself judiciously until his normal five 
 o'clock dinner hour, when he returned to snatch a per- 
 functory meal at a side table in the hall, his womenkind, 
 after their wont, declining anything more substantial than 
 nomadic cups of tea, brewed in the kitchen tea-pot, and 
 drunk standing, like the Queen's health. 
 
 But by eight o'clock all preparations were completed, and 
 the young ladies were in the drawing-room, attired alike in 
 white muslin and rose-coloured sashes, with faces pink and 
 glossy from soap and water. In Lismoyle, punctuality was 
 observed at all entertainments, not as a virtue but as a 
 pleasure, and at half-past eight the little glaring drawing- 
 room had rather more people in it than it could con- 
 veniently hold. Mrs. Beattie had trawled Lismoyle and its 
 environs with the purest impartiality ; no one was invidiously 
 omitted, not even young Mr. Redmond the solicitor's clerk, 
 who came in thick boots and a suit of dress clothes so much 
 too big for him as to make his trousers look like twin 
 concertinas, and also to suggest the more massive pro- 
 portions of his employer, Mr. Lynch. In this assemblage, 
 Mrs. Baker, in her celebrated maroon velvet, was a star of 
 the first magnitude, only excelled by Miss Mullen, whose 
 arrival with her cousin was, in a way, the event of the 
 evening. Everyone knew that Miss Fitzpatrick had re- 
 
I So The Real Charlotte. 
 
 turned from Bruff that day, and trailing clouds of glory 
 followed her in the mind's eye of the party as she came into 
 the room. Most people, too, knew of the steam-launch 
 adventure, so that when, later in the proceedings, Mr. 
 Hawkins made his appearance, poor Mrs. Beattie was given 
 small credit for having secured this prize. 
 
 " Are they engaged, do you think ? " whispered Miss 
 Corkran, the curate's sister, to Miss Baker. 
 
 " Engaged indeed ! " echoed Miss Baker, " no more than 
 you are ! If you knew him as well as I do you'd know that 
 flirting's all he cares for ! " 
 
 Miss Corkran, who had not the pleasure of Mr. Hawkins' 
 acquaintance, regarded him coldly through her spectacles, 
 and said that for her own part she disapproved of flirting, 
 but liked making gentlemen-friends. 
 
 " Well, I suppose I might as well confess," said Miss 
 Baker with a frivolous laugh, " that there's nothing I care for 
 like flirting, but p'pa's awful particular! Wasn't he for 
 turning Dr. M'Call out of the house last summer because 
 he cot me curling his moustache with my curling-tongs ! ' I 
 don't care what you do with officers, 1 says p'pa, * but I'll not 
 have you going on with that Rathgar bounder of a fellow ! ' 
 Ah, but that was when the poor ' Foragers ' were quartered 
 here ', they were the jolliest lot we ever had ! " 
 
 Miss Corkran paid scant attention to these memories, 
 being wholly occupied with observing the demeanour' of 
 Mr. Hawkins, who was holding Miss Mullen in conversa- 
 tion. Charlotte's big, pale face had an intellectuality and 
 power about it that would have made her conspicuous in a 
 gathering more distinguished than the present, and,ven 
 Mr. Hawkins felt something like awe of her, and said to 
 himself that she would know how to make it hot for him if 
 she chose to cut up rough about the launch business. 
 
 As he reflected on that escapade he felt that he would 
 have given a good round sum of money that it had not 
 taken place. He had played the fool in his usual way, and 
 now it didn't seem fair to back out of it. That, at all 
 events, was the reason he gave to himself for coming to this 
 blooming menagerie, as he inwardly termed Mrs. Beattie's 
 highest social effort ; it wouldn't do to chuck the whole 
 thing up all of a sudden, even though, of course, the little 
 
The Real Charlotte. 181 
 
 girl knew as well as he did that it was all nothing but a lark. 
 This was pretty much the substance of the excuses that he 
 had offered to Captain Cursiter ; and they had seemed so 
 successful at the time that he now soothed his guilty 
 conscience with a rechauffe of them, while he slowly and 
 conversationally made his way round the room towards the 
 green rep sofa in the corner, whereon sat Miss Fitzpatrick, 
 looking charming things at Mr. Corkran, judging, at least, 
 by the smile that displayed the reverend gentleman's pro- 
 minent teeth to such advantage. Hawkins kept on looking 
 at her over the shoulder of the Miss Beattie to whom he was 
 talking, and with each glance he thought her looking more 
 and more lovely. Prudence melted in a feverish longing 
 to be near her again, and the direction of his wandering eye 
 became at length so apparent that Miss Carrie afterwards 
 told her sister that " Mr. Hawkins wasy^zHully gone about 
 Francie Fitzpatrick oh, the tender looks he cast at her ! " 
 
 Mrs. Beattie's entertainments always began with music, 
 and the recognised musicians of Lismoyle were now con- 
 tributing his or her share in accustomed succession. 
 Hawkins waited until the time came for Mr. Corkran to 
 exhibit his wiry bass, and then definitely took up his 
 position on the green sofa. When he had first come into 
 the room their eyes had met with a thrilling sense of under- 
 standing, and since then Francie had felt rather than seen 
 nis steady and diplomatic advance in her direction. But 
 somehow, now that he was beside her, they seemed to find 
 little to say to each other. 
 
 " I suppose they're all talking about our running aground 
 yesterday," he said at last in a low voice. " Does she 
 know anything about it yet ? " indicating Miss Mullen with 
 a scarcely perceptible turn of his eye. 
 
 " No," replied Francie in the same lowered voice ; " but 
 she will before the evening's out. Everyone's quizzing me 
 about it." She looked at him anxiously as she spoke, and 
 his light eyebrows met in a frown. 
 
 " Confound their cheek ! " he said angrily ; " why don t 
 you shut them up ? " 
 
 " I don't know what to say to them. They only roar 
 laughing at me, and say I'm not born to be drowned 
 anyway." 
 
1 82 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 "Look here," said Hawkins impatiently, "what do 
 they do at these shows ? Have we got to sit here all the 
 evening ? " 
 
 " Hush ! Look at Charlotte looking at you, and that's 
 Carrie Beattie just in front of us." 
 
 " I didn't come here to be wedged into a corner of this 
 little beastly hole all the evening," he answered rebelliously ; 
 "can't we get out to the stairs or the garden or some- 
 thing ? " 
 
 " Mercy on us ! " exclaimed Francie, half-frightened and 
 half-delighted at his temerity. <f Of course we can't ! 
 Why, they'll be going down to tea now in a minute after 
 that perhaps " 
 
 "There won't be any perhaps about it," said Hawkins, 
 looking at her with an expression that made her blush and 
 tremble, " will there ? " 
 
 " I don't know not if you go away now," she murmured, 
 " I'm so afraid of Charlotte." 
 
 "I've nowhere to go; I only came here to see you." 
 
 Captain Cursiter, at this moment refilling his second pipe, 
 would not have studied the fascinating pages of the Engineer 
 with such a careless rapture had he at all realised how Mr. 
 Hawkins was fulfilling his promises of amendment. 
 
 At this juncture, however, the ringing of a bell in the hall 
 notified that tea was ready, and before Hawkins had time 
 for individual action, he found himself swept forward by his 
 hostess, and charged with the task of taking Mrs. Rattray, 
 the doctor's bride, down to the dining-room. The supply 
 of men did little more than yield a sufficiency for the 
 matrons, and after these had gone forth with due state, 
 Francie found herself in the midst of a throng of young 
 ladies following in the wake of their seniors. As she came 
 down the stairs she was aware of a tall man taking off his 
 coat in a corner of the hall, and before she reached the 
 dining-room door Mr. Lambert's hand was laid upon her 
 arm. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 TEA at Mrs. Seattle's parties was a serious meal, and, as a 
 considerable time had elapsed since any of the company, 
 
The Real Charlotte. 183 
 
 except Mr. Hawkins, had dined, they did full justice to her 
 hospitality. That young gentleman toyed with a plate of 
 raspberries and cream and a cup of coffee, and spasmodically 
 devoted himself to Mrs. Rattray in a way that quite repaid 
 her for occasional lapses of attention. Francie was sitting 
 opposite to him, not at the table, where, indeed, there was 
 no room for her, but on a window-sill, where she was shar- 
 ing a small table with Mr. Lambert. They were partly 
 screened by the window curtains, but it seemed to Hawkins 
 that Lambert was talking a great deal and that she was eat- 
 ing nothing. Whatever was the subject of their conversation 
 they were looking very serious over it, and, as it progressed, 
 Francie seemed to get more and more behind her window 
 curtain. The general clamour made it impossible for him 
 to hear what they were talking about, and Mrs. Rattray's 
 demands upon his attention became more intolerable every 
 moment, as he looked at Francie and saw how wholly 
 another man was monopolising her. 
 
 " And do you like being stationed here, Mr. Hawkins ? " 
 said Mrs. Rattray after a pause. 
 
 " Eh ? what ? Oh yes, of course I do awfully ! you're 
 all such delightful people, y'know ! " 
 
 Mrs. Rattray bridled with pleasure at this audacity. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Hawkins, I'm afraid you're a terrible flatterer ! 
 Do you know that one of the officers of the Foragers said 
 he thought it was a beastly spawt ! " 
 
 " Beastly what ? Oh yes, I see. I don't agree with him 
 at all ; I think it's a capital good spot." (Why did that old 
 ass, Mrs. Corkran, stick her great widow's cap just between 
 him and the curtain ? Francie had leaned forward and 
 looked at him that very second, and that infernal white tow- 
 row had got in his way.) 
 
 Mrs. Rattray thought it was time to play her trump card. 
 
 " I suppose you read a great deal, Mr. Hawkins ? Dr. 
 Rattray takes the a the Pink One I think he calls it I 
 know, of course, it's only a paper for gentlemen," she added 
 hurriedly, " but I believe it's very comical, and the doctoi 
 would be most happy to lend it to you." 
 
 Mr. Hawkins, whose Sunday mornings would have been 
 a blank without the solace of the Sporting Times, explained 
 that the loan was unnecessary, but Mrs. Rattray felt that she 
 
1 84 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 had nevertheless made her point, and resolved that she 
 would next Sunday study the Pink One's inscrutable pages, 
 so that she and Mr. Hawkins might have, at least, one sub- 
 ject in common. 
 
 By this time the younger members of the company had 
 finished their tea, and those nearest the door began to make 
 a move. The first to leave the room were Francie and 
 Lambert, and poor Hawkins, who had hoped that his time 
 of release had at length come, found it difficult to behave as 
 becomes a gentleman and a soldier, when Mrs. Rattray, with 
 the air of one who makes a concession, said she thought she 
 could try another saucer of raspberries. Before they left the 
 table the piano had begun again upstairs, and a muffled 
 thumping, that shook flakes from the ceiling down on to the 
 tea-table, told that the realities of the evening had begun at 
 last. 
 
 " I knew the young people would be at that before the 
 evening was out," said Mrs. Beattie with an indulgent laugh, 
 " though the girls let on to me it was only a musical party 
 they wanted." 
 
 " Ah well, they'll never do it younger ! " said Mrs. Baker, 
 leaning back with her third cup of tea in her hand. " Girls 
 will be girls, as I've just been saying to Miss Mullen." 
 
 " Girls will be torn-fools ! " said Miss Mullen with a brow 
 of storm, thrusting her hands into her gloves, while her eyes 
 followed Hawkins, who had at length detached Mrs. Rattray 
 from the pleasures of the table, and was hurrying her out of 
 the room. 
 
 " Oh now, Miss Mullen, you mustn't be so cynical," said 
 Mrs. Beattie from behind the tea-urn ; " we have six girls, 
 and I declare now Mr. Beattie and I wouldn't wish to have 
 one less." 
 
 " Well, they're a great responsibility," said Mrs. Corkran 
 with a slow wag of her obtrusively widowed head, " and no 
 one knows that better than a mother. I shall never forget 
 the anxiety I went through it was just before we came to 
 this parish when my Bessy had an offer. Poor Mr. Cork- 
 ran and I disapproved of the young man, and we were both 
 quite distracted about it. Indeed we had to make it a sub- 
 ject of prayer, and a fortnight afterwards the young man 
 died. Oh, doesn't it show the wonderful force of prayer ? " 
 
The Real Charlotte. 185 
 
 " Well now, I think it's a pity you didn't let it alone," said 
 Mr. Lynch, with something resembling a wink at Miss 
 Mullen. 
 
 " I daresay Bessy's very much of your opinion," said 
 Charlotte, unable to refrain from a jibe at Miss Corkran, 
 pre-occupied though she was with her own wrath. She 
 pushed her chair brusquely back from the table. " I think, 
 with your kind permission, Mrs. Beattie, I'll go upstairs and 
 see what's going on. Don't stir, Mr. Lynch, I'm able to get 
 that far by myself." 
 
 When Miss Mullen arrived at the top of the steep flight 
 of stairs, she paused on the landing amongst the exiled 
 drawing-room chairs and tables, and looked in at seven or 
 eight couples revolving in a space so limited as to make 
 movement a difficulty, if not a danger, and in an atmosphere 
 already thickened with dust from the carpet. She saw to 
 her surprise that her cousin was dancing with Lambert, and, 
 after a careful survey of the room, espied Mr. Hawkins 
 standing partnerless in one of the windows. 
 
 " I wonder what she's at now," thought Charlotte to her- 
 self ; " is she trying to play Roddy off against him ? The 
 little cat, I wouldn't put it past her ! " 
 
 As she looked at them wheeling slowly round in the 
 cramped circle she could see that neither he or Francie spoke 
 to each other, and when, the dance being over, they sat 
 down together in the corner of the room, they seemed 
 scarcely more disposed to talk than they had been when 
 dancing. 
 
 "Aha ! Roddy's a good fellow," she thought, "he's doing 
 his best to help me by keeping her away from that young 
 scamp." 
 
 At this point the young scamp in question crossed the 
 room and asked Miss Fitzpatrick for the next dance in a 
 manner that indicated just displeasure. The heat of the 
 room and the exertion of dancing on a carpet had endued 
 most of the dancers with the complexions of ripe plums, 
 but Francie seemed to have been robbed of all colour. She 
 did not look up at him as he proffered his request. 
 
 " I'm engaged for the next dance." 
 
 Hawkins became very red. " Well, the next after that," 
 he persisted, trying to catch her eye. 
 
1 86 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 li There isn't any next," said Francie, looking suddenly at 
 him with defiant eyes ; " after the next we're going home." 
 
 Hawkins stared for a brief instant at her with a sparkle of 
 anger in his eyes. " Oh, very well," he said with exaggerated 
 politeness of manner, " I thought I was engaged to you for 
 the first dance after supper, that was all." 
 
 He turned away at once and walked out of the room, 
 brushing past Charlotte at the door, and elbowed his way 
 through the uproarious throng that crowded the staircase. 
 Mrs. Beattie, coming up from the tea-table with her fellow- 
 matrons, had no idea of permitting her prize guest to escape 
 so early. Hawkins was captured, his excuses were disre- 
 garded, and he was driven up the stairs again. 
 
 " Very well," he said to himself, " if she chooses to throw 
 me over, I'll let her see that I can get on without her." It 
 did not occur to him that Francie was only acting in 
 accordance with the theory of the affair that he had himself 
 presented to Captain Cursiter. His mind was now wholly 
 given to revenging the snub he had received, and, spurred 
 by this desire, he advanced to Miss Lynch, who was reposing 
 in an armchair in a corner of the landing, while her partner 
 played upon her heated face with the drawing-room bellows, 
 and secured her for the next dance. 
 
 When Mr. Hawkins gave his mind to rollicking, there 
 were few who could do it more thoroughly, and the ensuing 
 polka was stamped through by him and Miss Lynch with a 
 vigour that scattered all opposing couples like ninepins. 
 Even his strapping partner appealed for mercy. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Hawkins," she panted, " wouldn't you chassy 
 now please ? if you twirl me any more, I think I'll die ! " 
 
 But Mr. Hawkins was deaf to entreaty ; far from modera- 
 ting his exertions, he even snatched the eldest Miss Beattie 
 from her position as on-looker, and, compelling her to avail 
 herself of the dubious protection of his other arm, whirled 
 her and Miss Lynch round the room with him in a many- 
 elbowed triangle. The progress of the other dancers was 
 necessarily checked by this performance, but it was viewed 
 with the highest favour by all the matrons, especially those 
 whose daughters had been selected to take part in it. 
 Francie looked on from the doorway, whither she and her 
 partner, the Reverend Corkran, had been driven for safety, 
 
The Real Charlotte. 187 
 
 with a tearing pain at her heart. Her lips were set in a 
 fixed smile a smile that barely kept their quivering in 
 check and her beautiful eyes shone upon the dazzled 
 curate through a moisture that was the next thing to 
 tears. 
 
 " I want to find Miss Mullen," she said at last, dragging 
 Mr. Corkran towards the stairs, when a fresh burst of 
 applause from the dancing-room made them both look back. 
 Hawkins' two partners had, at a critical turn, perfidiously 
 let him go with such suddenness that he had fallen flat on 
 the floor, and having pursued them as they polkaed round 
 the room, he was now encircling both with one arm, and 
 affecting to box their ears with his other hand, encouraged 
 thereto by cries of " Box them, Mr. Hawkins ! " from Mrs. 
 Beattie. " Box them well ! " 
 
 Charlotte was in the dining-room, partaking of a 
 gentlemanly glass of Marsala with Mr. Beattie, and other 
 heads of families. 
 
 " Great high jinks they're having upstairs ! " she remarked, 
 as the windows and tea-cups rattled from the stamping 
 overhead, and Mr. Beattie cast many an anxious eye 
 towards the ceiling. " I suppose my young lady's in the 
 thick of it, whatever it is ! " She always assumed the 
 attitude of the benevolently resigned chaperon when she 
 talked about Francie, and Mr. Lynch was on the point of 
 replying in an appropriate tone of humorous condolence, 
 when the young lady herself appeared on Mr. Corkran's 
 arm, with an expression that at once struck Charlotte as 
 being very unlike high jinks. 
 
 " Why, child, what do you want down here ? " she said. 
 " Are you tired dancing ? " 
 
 " I am ; awfully tired ; would you rnind going home, 
 Charlotte ? " 
 
 " What a question to ask before pur good host here ! Of 
 course I mind going home!" eyeing Francie narrowly as 
 she spoke ; " but I'll come if you like." 
 
 " Why, what people you all are for going home ! " pro- 
 tested Mr. Beattie hospitably; "there was Hawkins that 
 we only stopped by main strength, and Lambert slipped 
 away ten minutes ago, saying Mrs. Lambert wasn't well, and 
 he had to go and look after her ! What's your reverence 
 
1 88 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 about letting her go away now, when they're having the fun 
 of Cork upstairs ? " 
 
 Francie smiled a pale smile, but held to her point, and a 
 few minutes afterwards she and Charlotte had made their 
 way through the knot of loafers at the garden gate, and 
 were walking through the empty moon-lit streets of Lismoyle 
 towards Tally Ho. Charlotte did not speak till the last 
 clanging of the Bric-b-brac polka had been left behind, and 
 then she turned to Francie with a manner from which the 
 affability had fallen like a garment. 
 
 " And now I'll thank you to tell me what's the truth of 
 this I hear from everyone in the town about you and that 
 young Hawkins being out till all hours of the night in the 
 steam-launch by yourselves ? " 
 
 " It wasn't our fault. We were in by half-past nine." 
 Francie had hardly spirit enough to defend herself, and the 
 languor in her voice infuriated Charlotte. 
 
 " Don't give me any of your fine-lady airs," she said 
 brutally ; " I can tell ye this, that if ye can't learn how to 
 behave yourself decently I'll pack ye back to Dublin ! " 
 
 The words passed over Francie like an angry wind, dis- 
 turbing, but without much power to injure. 
 
 " All right, I'll go away when you like." 
 
 Charlotte hardly heard her. " I'll be ashamed to look 
 me old friend, Lady Dysart, in the face ! " She stormed 
 on. " Disgracing her house by such goings on with an un- 
 principled blackguard that has no more idea of marrying 
 you than I have not that that's anything to be regretted ! 
 An impudent little upstart without a halfpenny in his 
 pocket, and as for family " her contempt stemmed her 
 volubility for a mouthing moment. "God only knows 
 what gutter he sprang from ; I don't suppose he has a drop 
 of blood in his whole body ! " 
 
 " I'm not thinking of marrying him no more than he is of 
 marrying me," answered Francie in the same lifeless voice, 
 but this time faltering a little. "You needn't bother me 
 about him, Charlotte ; he's engaged." 
 
 " Engaged ! " yelled Charlotte, squaring round at her 
 cousin, and standing stock still in her amazement. " Why 
 didn't you tell me so before ? When did you hear it ? " 
 
 " I heard it some time ago from a person whose name I 
 
The Real Charlotte. 189 
 
 won't give you," said Francie, walking on. "They're to be 
 married before Christmas." The lump rose at last in her 
 throat, and she trod hard on the ground as she walked, in 
 the effort to keep the tears back. 
 
 Charlotte girded her velveteen skirt still higher, and 
 hurried clumsily after the light, graceful figure. 
 
 " Wait, child ! Can't ye wait for me ? Are ye sure it's 
 true ? " 
 
 Francie nodded. 
 
 u The young reprobate ! To be making you so remark- 
 able, and to have the other one up his sleeve all the time ! 
 Didn't I say he had no notion of marrying ye ? " 
 
 Francie made no reply, and Charlotte with some diffi- 
 culty disengaged her hand from her wrappings and patted 
 her on the back. 
 
 " Well, never mind, me child," she said with noisy cheer- 
 fulness ; " you're not trusting to the likes of that fellow ! 
 wait till ye're me Lady Dysart of Bruff, and it's little ye'll 
 think of him then ! " 
 
 They had. reached the Tally Ho gate by this time; 
 Francie opened it, and plunged into the pitch-dark tunnel 
 of evergreens without a word. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 THE pre-eminently domestic smell of black currant jam per- 
 vaded Tally Ho next day. The morning had been spent 
 by Charlotte and her retainers in stripping the straggling 
 old bushes of the berries that resembled nothing so much 
 as boot-buttons in size, colour and general consistency ; the 
 preserving pan had been borrowed, according to imme- 
 morial custom, from Miss Egan of the hotel, and at three 
 o'clock of the afternoon the first relay was sluggishly seeth- 
 ing and bubbling on the kitchen fire, and Charlotte, Norry, 
 and Bid Sal were seated at the kitchen table snipping the 
 brown tips of the shining fruit that still awaited its fate. 
 
 It was a bright, steamy day, when the hot sun and the 
 wet earth turned the atmosphere into a Turkish bath, and 
 the cats sat out of doors, but avoided the grass like the 
 plague. Francie had docilely picked currants with the 
 
The Real Charlotte. 
 
 others. She was accustomed to making herself useful, and 
 it did not occur to her to shut herself up in her room, or go 
 for a walk, or, in fact, isolate herself with her troubles in 
 any way. She had too little self-consciousness for these 
 deliberate methods, and she moved among the currant 
 bushes in her blue gown, and was merely uncomplainingly 
 thankful that she was able to pull the broad leaf of her hat 
 down so as to hide the eyes that were heavy from a sleepless 
 night and red from the sting of tears. She went over again 
 what Lambert had told her, as she mechanically dropped 
 the currants into her tin can ; the soldier-servant had read 
 the letters, and had told Michael, the Rosemount groom, 
 and Michael had told Mr. Lambert. She wouldn't have 
 cared a pin about his being engaged if he had only told her 
 so at first. She had flirted with engaged men plenty of times, 
 and it hadn't done anybody any harm, but this was quite 
 different. She couldn't believe, after the way he went on, 
 that he cared about another girl all the time, and yet 
 Michael had said that the soldier had said that they were 
 to be married at Christmas. Well, thank goodness, she 
 thought, with a half sob, she knew about it now ; he'd find 
 it hard to make a fool of her again. 
 
 After the early dinner the practical part of the jam-making 
 began, and for an hour Francie snipped at the currant-tops 
 as industriously as Charlotte herself, But by the time that 
 the first brew was ready for the preserving pan, the heat of 
 the kitchen, and the wearisomeness of Charlotte's endless 
 discussions with Norry, made intolerable the headache that 
 had all day hovered about her forehead, and she fetched 
 her hat and a book and went out into the garden to look 
 for coolness and distraction. She wandered up to the seat 
 where she had sat on the day that Lambert gave her the 
 bangle, and, sitting down, opened her book, a railway novel, 
 bought by Charlotte on her journey from Dublin. She 
 read its stodgily sensational pages with hot tired eyes, and 
 tried hard to forget her own unhappiness in the infinitely 
 more terrific woes of its heroine ; but now and then some 
 chance expression, or one of those terms of endearment 
 that were lavished throughout its pages, would leap up into 
 borrowed life and sincerity, and she would shut her eyes 
 and drift back into the golden haze on Lough Moyle, when 
 
The Real Charlotte. 191 
 
 his hand had pressed her head down on his shoulder, and 
 his kisses had touched her soul. At such moments all the 
 heated stillness of the lake was round her, with no creature 
 nearer than the white cottages on the far hillsides; and 
 when the inevitable present swam back to her, with carts 
 rattling past on the road, and insects buzzing and blunder- 
 ing against her face, and Bid Sal's shrill summoning of the 
 hens to their food, she would fling herself again into the 
 book to hide from the pursuing pain and the undying, 
 insane voice of hope. 
 
 Hope mastered pain, and reality mastered both, when, 
 with the conventionality of situation to which life sometimes 
 condescends, there came steps on the gravel, and looking 
 up she saw that Hawkins was coming towards her. Her 
 heart stopped and rushed on again like a startled horse, but 
 all the rest of her remained still and almost impassive, and 
 she leaned her head over her book to keep up the affecta- 
 tion of not having seen him. 
 
 " I saw your dress through the trees as I was coming up 
 the drive," he said after a moment of suffocating silence, 
 "and so " he held out his hand, " aren't you going to 
 shake hands with me ? " 
 
 " How d'ye do, Mr. Hawkins ? " she gave him a limp 
 hand and withdrew it instantly. 
 
 Hawkins sat down beside her, and looked hard at her 
 half-averted face. He had solved the problem of her treat- 
 ment of him last night in a way quite satisfactory to himself, 
 and he thought that now that he had been sharp enough to 
 have found her here, away from Miss Mullen's eye, things 
 would be very different. He had quite forgiven her her 
 share in the transgression ; in fact, if the truth were known 
 he had enjoyed himself considerably after she had left 
 Mrs. Beattie's party, and had gone back to Captain Cursiter 
 and disingenuously given him to understand that he had 
 hardly spoken a word to Miss Fitzpatrick the whole evening. 
 
 " So you wouldn't dance with me last night," he said, as 
 if he were speaking to a child ; " wasn't that very unkind of 
 you ? " 
 
 " No it was not," she replied, without looking at him. 
 
 " Well, /think it was," he said, lightly touching the hand 
 that held the novel. 
 
1 92 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 Francie took her hand sharply away. 
 
 " I think you are being very unkind now," he continued ; 
 " aren't you even going to look at me ? " 
 
 " Oh yes, I'll look at you if you like," she said, turning 
 upon him in a kind of desperation; "it doesn't do me 
 much harm, and I don't suppose it does you much good." 
 
 The cool, indifferent manner that she had intended to 
 assume was already too difficult for her, and she sought a 
 momentary refuge in rudeness. He showed all the white 
 teeth, that were his best point, in a smile that was patronis- 
 ingly free from resentment. 
 
 " Why, what's the matter with her ? " he said caressingly. 
 " I believe I know what it's all about. She's been catching 
 it about that day in the launch ! Isn't that it ? " 
 
 " I don't know what you're talking about, Mr. Hawkins," 
 said Francie, with an indifferent attempt at hauteur ; " but 
 since you're so clever at guessing things I suppose there's 
 no need of me telling you." 
 
 Hawkins came closer to her, and forcibly took possession 
 of her hands. " What's the matter with you ? " he said in a 
 low voice ; " why are you angry with me ? Don't you know 
 I love you ? " The unexpected element of uncertainty 
 sharpened the edge of his feelings and gave his voice an 
 earnestness that was foreign to it. 
 
 Francie started visibly ; " No, I know you don't," she said, 
 facing him suddenly, like some trapped creature ; " I know 
 you're in love with somebody else ! " 
 
 His eyes flinched as though a light had been flashed in 
 them. " What do you mean ? " he said quickly, while a 
 rush of blood darkened his face to the roots of his yellow 
 hair, and made the veins stand out on his forehead ; " who 
 told you that ? " 
 
 " It doesn't matter who told me," she said with a miser- 
 able satisfaction that her bolt had sped home ; " but I know 
 it's true." 
 
 " I give you my honour it's not ! " he said passionately ; 
 " you might have known better than to believe it." 
 
 " Oh yes, I might," she said with all the scorn she was 
 master of; "but I think 'twas as good for me I didn't." 
 Her voice collapsed at the end of the sentence, and the dry 
 sob that rose in her throat almost choked her. She stood 
 
The Real Charlotte. 193 
 
 up and turned her face away to hide the angry tears that in 
 spite of herself had sprung to her eyes. 
 
 Hawkins caught her hand again and held it tightly. " I 
 know what it is. I suppose they've been telling you of that 
 time I was in Limerick ; and that was all rot from beginning 
 to end ; anyone could tell you that." 
 
 u It's not that ; I heard all about that" 
 
 Hawkins jumped up. " I don't care what you heard," he 
 said violently, " Don't turn your head away from me like 
 that, I won't have it. I know that you care about me, and 
 I know that I shouldn't care if everyone in the world was 
 dead, so long as you were here." His arm was round her, 
 but she shook herself free. 
 
 " What about Miss Coppard ? " she said ; " what about 
 being married before Christmas ? " 
 
 For a moment Hawkins could find no words to say. 
 " So you've got hold of that, have you ? " he said, after some 
 seconds of silence that seemed endless to Francie. " And 
 do you think that will come between us ? " 
 
 " Of course it must come between us," she said in a stifled 
 voice ; " and you knew that all through." 
 
 Mr. Hawkins' engagement was a painful necessity about 
 which he affaired himself as little as possible. He recog- 
 nised it as a certain and not disagreeable road to paying his 
 debts, which might with good luck be prolonged till he got 
 his company, and, latterly, it had fallen more than ever into 
 the background. That it should interfere with his amuse- 
 ments in any way made it an impertinence of a wholly 
 intolerable kind. 
 
 " It shall not come between us ! " he burst out ; " I don't 
 care what happens, I won't give you up ! I give you my 
 honour I never cared twopence about her I've never 
 thought of her since I first saw you I've thought of no 
 one but you." 
 
 His hot, stammering words were like music to her , but 
 that staunchness of soul that was her redeeming quality still 
 urged her to opposition. 
 
 " It's no good your going on like this. You know you're 
 going to marry her. Let me go." 
 
 But Mr. Hawkins was not in the habit of being baulked 
 of anything on which he had set his heart. 
 
194 Th* Real Charlotte. 
 
 " No, I will not let you go," he said, drawing her towards 
 him with bullying tenderness. " In the first place, you're 
 not able to stand, and in the second place, I'm not going to 
 marry anybody but you." 
 
 He spoke with a certainty that convinced himself; the 
 certainty of a character that does not count the cost either 
 for itself or for others ; and, in the space of a kiss, her dis- 
 trust was left far behind her as a despicable thing. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 NEARLY three weeks had gone by since Mrs. Beattie's party, 
 and as Charlotte Mullen walked slowly along the road 
 towards Rosemount one afternoon, her eyes fixed on the 
 square toes of her boots, and her hands, as was her custom, 
 in the pockets of her black jacket, she meditated agreeably 
 upon recent events. Of these perhaps the pleasantest was 
 Mr. Hawkins' departure to Hythe, for a musketry course, 
 which had taken place somewhat unexpectedly a fortnight 
 ago. He was a good-for-nothing young limb, and engage- 
 ment or no engagement it was a good job he was out of the 
 place ; and, after all, Francie had not seemed to mind. 
 Almost equally satisfactory was the recollection of that 
 facetious letter to Christopher Dysart, in which she had so 
 playfully reminded him of the ancient promise to photograph 
 the Tally Ho cats, and hoped that she and her cousin would 
 not come under that category. Its success had even been 
 surprising, for not only had Christopher come and spent a 
 long afternoon in that difficult enterprise, but had come 
 again more than once, on pretexts that had appeared to 
 Charlotte satisfactorily flimsy, and had apparently set aside 
 what she knew to be his repugnance to herself. That he 
 should lend Francie "John Inglesant" and Rossetti's Poems, 
 made Charlotte laugh in her sleeve. She had her own very 
 sound opinion of her cousin's literary capacity, and had no 
 sympathy for the scientific interest felt by a philosopher in 
 the evolution of a nascent soul. Christopher's manner did 
 not, it is true, coincide with her theory of a lover, which was 
 crude, and founded on taste rather than experience, but she 
 had imagination enough to recognise that Christopher, in 
 
The Real Charlotte. 195 
 
 love-making, as in most other things, would pursue methods 
 unknown to her. 
 
 At this point in her reflections, congratulation began to 
 wane. She thought she knew every twist and turn in 
 Roddy Lambert, but lately she had not been able to explain 
 him at all to her satisfaction. He was always coming to 
 Tally Ho, and he always seemed in a bad temper when he 
 was there ; in fact she had never known him as ill-mannered 
 as he was last week, one day when he and Christopher were 
 there together, and she had tried, for various excellent 
 reasons, to get him off into the dining-room to talk business. 
 She couldn't honestly say that Francie was running after 
 him, though of course she had that nasty flirty way with 
 every man, old or young, married or single ; but all the 
 same, there was something in it she didn't like. The girl 
 was more trouble than she was worth ; and if it wasn't for 
 Christopher Dysart she'd have sent her packing back to 
 Letitia Fitzpatrick, and told her that whether she could 
 manage it or not she must keep her. But of course to have 
 Sir Christopher Dysart of Bruff she rolled the title on her 
 tongue as a cousin was worthy of patience. 
 
 As she walked up the trim Rosemount avenue she spied 
 the owner of the house lying in a basket-chair in the shade, 
 with a pipe in his mouth, and in his hand that journal 
 politely described by Mrs. Rattray as the " the Pink One" 
 
 " Hallo, Charlotte ! " he said lazily, glancing up at her 
 from under the peak of his cap, " you look warm." 
 
 " And you look what you are, and that's cool, in manners 
 and body," retorted Miss Mullen, coming and standing 
 beside him, "and if you had tramped on your four bones 
 through the dust, maybe you'd be as hot as I am." 
 
 " What do you wear that thick coat for ? " he said, look- 
 ing at it with a disfavour that he took no trouble to 
 hide. 
 
 Charlotte became rather red. She had the Irish peasant- 
 woman's love of heavy clothing and dislike of abating any 
 item of it in summer. 
 
 " If you had my tendency to bronchitis, me fine fellow/' 
 she said, seating herself on the uncomfortable garden bench 
 beside which his chair had been placed, " you'd think more 
 of your health than your appearance." 
 
ig6 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 "Very likely," said Mr. Lambert, yawning and relapsing 
 into silence. 
 
 " Well, Roddy," resumed Charlotte more amicably, " I 
 didn't walk all the way here to discuss the fashions with 
 you. Have y'any more news from the seat of war ? " 
 
 " No ; confound her, she won't stir, and I don't see what's 
 going to make her unless I evict her." 
 
 " Why don't ye writ her for the money ? " said Charlotte, 
 the spirit of her attorney grandfather gleaming in her eyes ; 
 "that'd frighten her !" 
 
 " I don't want to do that if I can help it. I spoke to her 
 about the lodge that Lady Dysart said she could have, and 
 the old devil was fit to be tied ; but we might get her to it 
 before we've done with her." 
 
 "If it was me I'd writ her now," repeated Charlotte 
 venomously ; " you'll find you'll have to come to it in the 
 end." 
 
 " It's a sin to see that lovely pasture going to waste," 
 said Lambert, leaning back and puffing at his pipe. " Peter 
 Joyce hasn't six head of cattle on it this minute." 
 
 " If you and I had it, Roddy," said Charlotte, eyeing him 
 with a curious, guarded tenderness, "it wouldn't be that 
 way." 
 
 Some vibration of the strong, incongruous tremor that 
 passed through her as she spoke, reached Lambert's in- 
 dolent perception and startled it. It reminded him of the 
 nebulous understanding that taking her money seemed to 
 have involved him in ; he believed he knew why she had 
 given it to him, and though he knew also that he held his 
 advantage upon precarious terms, even his coarse-fibred 
 nature found something repellent in the thought of having 
 to diplomatise with such affections as Charlotte's. 
 
 " I was up at Murphy's yesterday," he said, as if his train 
 of ideas had not been interrupted. " He has a grand filly 
 there that I'd buy to-morrow if I had the money, or any 
 place to put her. There's a pot of money in her." 
 
 " Well, if you'll get me Gurthnamuckla," said Charlotte 
 with a laugh, in which nervousness was strangely apparent, 
 "you may buy up every young horse in the country and 
 stable them in the parlour, so long as you'll leave the attics 
 for me and the cats." 
 
The Real Charlotte. 197 
 
 Lambert turned his head upon its cushion, and looked at 
 her. 
 
 " I think I'll leave you a little more space than that, 
 Charlotte, if ever we stable our horses together." 
 
 She glanced at him, as aware of the double entendre, and 
 as stirred by it as he had intended her to be. Perhaps a 
 little more than he had intended ; at all events, he jerked 
 himself into a sitting position, and, getting on to his feet, 
 stretched himself with almost ostentatious ease. 
 
 " Where's Francie ? " he asked, yawning. 
 
 " At home, dressmaking," replied Miss Mullen. She was 
 a little paler than usual. " I think I'll go in now and have 
 a cup of tea with Lucy," she said, rising from the garden 
 bench with something like an effort. 
 
 " Well, I daresay I'll take the mare down to Tally Ho, 
 and make Francie go for a ride," said Lambert ; " it's a 
 pity for anyone to be stewing in the house on a day like this." 
 
 " I wanted her to come here with me, but she wouldn't," 
 Charlotte called after him as he turned towards the path 
 that led to the stables. " Maybe she thought there might 
 be metal more attractive for her at home ! " 
 
 She grinned to herself as she went up the steps. " Me 
 gentleman may put that in his pipe and smoke it," she 
 thought ; " that little hussy would let him think it was for 
 him she was sitting at home ! " 
 
 Ever since Mrs. Lambert's first entrance into Lismoyle 
 society, she had found in Charlotte her most intimate and 
 reliable ally. If Mr. Lambert had been at all uneasy as to 
 his bride's reception by Miss Mullen, he must have been 
 agreeably surprised to find that after a month or so Charlotte 
 had become as useful and pleasant to Mrs. Lambert as in 
 older days she had been to him. That Charlotte should 
 have recognised the paramount necessity of his marrying 
 money, had been to Lambert a proof of her eminent com- 
 mon sense. He had always been careful to impress his ob- 
 vious destiny upon her, and he had always been grateful to 
 that destiny for having harmlessly fulfilled itself, while yet 
 old Mrs. Mullen's money was in her own keeping, and her 
 niece was, beyond all question, ineligible. That was Mr. 
 Lambert's view of the situation; whatever Charlotte's 
 opinion was, she kept it to herself. 
 
1 98 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 Mrs. Lambert was more than usually delighted to see her 
 ever-sympathising friend on this hot afternoon. One of her 
 chiefest merits in the turkey-hen's eyes was that she " was 
 as good as any doctor, and twice better than Dr. Rattray, 
 who would never believe the half she went through with pal- 
 pitations, and buzzings in her ears and roarings in her head," 
 and the first half hour or so of her visit was consumed in 
 minute detail of her more recent symptoms. The fact thai 
 large numbers of women entertain their visitors with biog- 
 raphies, mainly abusive, of their servants, has been dwelt on 
 to weariness by many writers; but, nevertheless, in ao history 
 of Mrs. Lambert could this characteristic be conscientiously 
 omitted. 
 
 " Oh, my dear," she said, as her second cup of sweet 
 weak tea was entered upon, " you know that Eliza Hackett, 
 that I got with the highest recommendations from the 
 Honourable Miss Carrick, and thinking she'd be so steady, 
 being a Protestant ? Well, last Sunday she went to mass ! " 
 She paused, and Charlotte, one of whose most genuine 
 feelings was a detestation of Roman Catholics, exclaimed : 
 
 " Goodness alive ! what did you let her do that for ? " 
 
 " How could I stop her ? " answered Mrs. Lambert plain- 
 tively, " she never told one in the house she was going, and 
 this morning, when I was looking at the meat with her in 
 the larder, I took the opportunity to speak to her about it. 
 ' Oh,' says she, turning round as cool as you please, ' I con- 
 sider the Irish Church hasn't the Apostolic succession ! ' " 
 
 "You don't tell me that fat-faced Eliza Hackett said 
 that ? " ejaculated Charlotte. 
 
 "She did, indeed," replied Mrs. Lambert deplorably; "I 
 was quite upset. ' Eliza,' says I, ' I wonder you have the 
 impudence to talk to me like that. You that was taught 
 better by the Honourable Miss Carrick.' * Ma'am,' says 
 she, up to my face, ' Moses and Aaron was two holy Roman 
 Catholic priests, and that's more than you can say of the 
 archdeacon ! ' Indeed, no,' says I, * thank God he's not ! ' 
 but I ask you, Charlotte, what could I say to a woman like 
 that, that would wrest the Scriptures to her own purposes?" 
 
 Even Charlotte's strong brain reeled in the attempt to 
 follow the arguments of Eliza the cook and Mrs. Lambert. 
 
 " Well, upon my word, Lucy, it's little I'd have argued 
 
The Real Charlotte. 199 
 
 with her. I'd have just said to her, ' Out of my house you 
 march, if you don't go to your church ! ' I think that would 
 have composed her religious scruples." 
 
 " Oh ! but, Charlotte," pleaded the turkey-hen, " I couldn't 
 part with her ; she knows just what gentlemen like, and Ro- 
 derick's so particular about savouries. When I told him 
 about her, he said he wouldn't care if she was a Mormon 
 and had a dozen husbands, so long as she made good 
 soup." 
 
 Charlotte laughed out loud. Mr. Lambert's turn of 
 humour had a robustness about it that always roused a 
 sympathetic chord in her. 
 
 " Well, that's a man all over ! His stomach before any- 
 one else's soul !" 
 
 " Oh, Charlotte, you shouldn't say such things ! Indeed, 
 Roderick will often take only the one cut of meat at his 
 dinner these times, and if it isn't to his liking he'll take 
 nothing ; he's a great epicure, I don't know what's over 
 him those last few weeks," continued Mrs. Lambert gloomily. 
 " unless it's the hot weather, and all the exercise he's taking, 
 that's making him cross." 
 
 " Well, from all I've ever seen of men," said Charlotte, 
 with a laugh, " the hotter they get the better pleased they 
 are. Take my word for it, there's no time a man's so proud 
 of himself as when he's ' larding the lean earth ' ! " 
 
 Mrs. Lambert looked bewildered, but was too much 
 affaired with her own thoughts to ask for an explanation of 
 what seemed to her a strange term in cookery, 
 
 " Did he know Francie Fitzpatrick much in Dublin ? r she 
 said after a pause, in which she had given a saucerful of 
 cream and sopped cake to her dog. 
 
 Charlotte looked at her hostess suddenly and searchingly 
 as she stooped with difficulty to take up the saucer. 
 
 " He's known her since she was a child," she replied, and 
 waited for further developments. 
 
 " I thought it must be that way," said Mrs. Lambert with 
 a dissatisfied sound in her voice \ " they're so very familiar- 
 like talking to each other." 
 
 Charlotte's heart paused for an instant in its strong, 
 regular course. Was it possible, she thought, that wisdom 
 was being perfected in the mouth of Lucy Lambert ? 
 
200 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 " I never noticed anything so wonderfully familiar," she 
 said, in a tone meant to provoke further confidence ; " I 
 never knew Roddy yet that he wasn't civil to a pretty girl ; 
 and as for Francie, any man comes handy to her ! Upon" 
 my word, she'd dote on a tongs, as they say ! " 
 
 Mrs. Lambert fidgeted nervously with her long gold 
 watchchain. " Well, Charlotte," she said, a little defiantly, 
 " I've been married to him five years now, and I've never 
 known him particular with any girl." 
 
 "Then, my dear woman, what's this nonsense you're 
 talking about him and Francie?" said Charlotte, with 
 Mephistophelian gaiety. 
 
 "Oh, Charlotte!" said Mrs. Lambert, suddenly getting 
 very red, and beginning to whimper, " I never thought to 
 speak of it M she broke off and began to look for her 
 handkerchief, while her respectable middle-aged face began 
 to wrinkle up like a child's, " and, indeed, I don't want to 
 say anything against the girl, for she's a nice girl, and so 
 I've always found her, but I can't help noticing " she 
 broke off again. 
 
 "What can't ye help noticing?" demanded Charlotte 
 roughly. 
 
 Mrs. Lambert drew a long breath that was half-suffocated 
 by a sob. " Oh, I don't know," she cried helplessly ; " he's 
 always going down to Tally Ho, by the way he'll take her 
 out riding or boating or something, and though he doesn't 
 say much, a little thing'll slip out now and again, and you 
 can't say a word to him but he'll get cross." 
 
 " Maybe he's in trouble about money unknown to you," 
 suggested Charlotte, who, for some reason or other, was not 
 displaying her usual capacity for indictment, " or maybe he 
 finds ' life not worth living because of the liver ' ! " she 
 ended, with a mirthless laugh. 
 
 " Oh, no, no, Charlotte ; indeed, it's no laughing joke at 
 all Mrs. Lambert hesitated, then, with a little hysterical 
 burst of sobs, " he talks about her in his sleep ! " she 
 quavered out, and began to cry miserably. 
 
 Charlotte sat perfectly still, looking at Mrs. Lambert with 
 eyes that saw, but held no pity for, her abundant tears. 
 How far more serious was this thing, if true, to her, than to 
 that contemptible whining creature, whose snuffling gasps 
 
The Real Charlotte. 201 
 
 were exasperating her almost beyond the bounds of endur- 
 ance. She waited till there was a lull. 
 
 " What did he say about her ? " she asked in a hard, jeer- 
 ing voice. 
 
 " Oh, Charlotte, how can I tell you ? all sorts of things 
 he says, nonsense like, and springing up and saying she'll 
 be drowned." 
 
 " Well, if it's any comfort to you," said Charlotte, " she 
 cares no more for him than the man in the moon ! She 
 has other fish to fry, I can tell you ! " 
 
 " But what signifies that, Charlotte," sighed Mrs. Lam- 
 bert, ' ' so long as he thinks about her ? " 
 
 "Tell him he's a fool to waste his time over her," sug- 
 gested Charlotte scoffingly, 
 
 " Is it me tell him such a thing ! w The turkey-hen lifted 
 her wet red eyes from her saturated pocket handkerchief and 
 began to laugh hysterically. " Much regard he has for what 
 / say to him ! Oh, don't make me laugh, Charlotte " a 
 frightened look came over her face, as if she had been 
 struck, and she fell back in her chair. " It's the palpita- 
 tions," she said faintly, with her hand on her heart. " Oh, 
 I'm going I'm going " 
 
 Charlotte ran to the chimney-piece, and took from it a 
 bottle of smelling salts. She put it to Mrs. Lambert's nose 
 with one hand, and with the other unfastened the neck of 
 her dress without any excitement or fuss. Her eyes were 
 keen and quiet as she bent over the pale blotched face that 
 lay on the antimacassar ; and when Mrs. Lambert began to 
 realise again what was going on round her, she was con- 
 scious of a hand chafing her own, a hand that was both 
 gentle and skilful. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 " METAL more attractive ! " Lambert thought there could 
 not be a more offensive phrase in the English language than 
 this, that had rung in his ears ever since Charlotte had 
 flung it at him when he parted from her on his own avenue. 
 He led the black mare straight to the dilapidated loose-box 
 at Tally Ho Lodge, in which she had before now waited so 
 
202 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 often and so dismally, with nothing to do except nose about 
 the broken manger for a stray oat or two, or make spiteful 
 faces through the rails at her comrade, the chestnut, in the 
 next stall. Lambert swung open the stable door, and was 
 confronted by the pricked ears and interested countenance 
 of a tall bay horse, whom he instantly recognised as being 
 one of the Bruff carriage horses, looking out of the loose- 
 box. Mr. Lambert's irritation culminated at this point in 
 appropriate profanity; he felt that all these things were 
 against him, and the thought that he would go straight back 
 to Rosemount made him stand still on the doorstep. But 
 the next moment he had a vision of himself and the two 
 horses turning in at the Rosemount gate, with the certain 
 prospect of being laughed at by Charlotte and condoled 
 with by his wife, and without so much as a sight of that 
 maddening face that was every day thrusting itself more and 
 more between him and his peace. It would be a confession 
 of defeat at the hands of Christopher Dysart, which alone 
 would be intolerable ; besides, there wasn't a doubt but 
 that, if Francie were given her choice, she would rather go 
 out riding with him than anything. 
 
 Buoyed up by this reflection, he put the chestnut into the 
 stable, and the mare into the cow-shed, and betook himself 
 to the house. The hall door was open, and stepping over 
 the cats on the door-mat, he knocked lightly at the drawing- 
 room door, and walked in without waiting for an answer. 
 Christopher was sitting with his back to him, holding one 
 end of a folded piece of pink cambric, while Francie, stand- 
 ing up in front of him, was cutting along the fold towards 
 him, with a formidable pair of scissors. 
 
 " Must I hold on to the end ? " he was saying, as the 
 scissors advanced in leaps towards his fingers. 
 
 " I'll kill you if you let go ! " answered Francie, rather 
 thickly, by reason of a pin between her front teeth. " Good- 
 ness, Mr. Lambert ! you frightened the heels off me ! I 
 thought you were Louisa with the tea." 
 
 " Good evening, Francie ; good evening, Dysart," said 
 Lambert with solemn frigidity. 
 
 Christopher reddened a little as he looked round. " I'm 
 afraid I can't shake hands with you, Lambert," he said 
 with an unavoidably foolish laugh, " I'm dressmaking." 
 
The Real Charlotte. 203 
 
 " So I see," replied Mr. Lambert, with something as near 
 a sneer as he dared. He always felt it a special unkindness 
 of Providence to have placed this young man to reign over 
 him, and the practical sentiment that it is well not to quarrel 
 with your bread and butter, had not unfrequently held him 
 back from a much-desired jibe. " I came, Francie," he 
 went on with the same portentous politeness, " to see if 
 you'd care to come for a ride with me." 
 
 " When ? Now ? " said Francie, without much enthusiasm. 
 
 " Oh, not unless you like," he replied in a palpably 
 offended tone. 
 
 " Well, how d'ye know I wouldn't like ? Keep quiet 
 now, Mr. Dysart, I've another one for you to hold ! " 
 
 " I'm afraid I must be going " began Christopher, look- 
 ing helplessly at the billows of pink cambric which sur- 
 rounded him on the floor. Lambert's arrival had suddenly 
 made the situation seem vulgar. 
 
 "Ah, can't you sit still now?" said Francie, thrusting 
 another length of material into his hand, and beginning to 
 cut swiftly towards him. " I declare you're very idle ! " 
 
 Lambert stood silent while this went on, and then, with 
 an angry look' at Francie, he said, " I understand, then, that 
 you're not coming out riding to-day ? " 
 
 " Do you ? " asked Francie, pinning the seam together 
 with marvellous rapidity ; " take care your understanding 
 isn't wrong ! Have you the horse down here ? " 
 
 " Of course I have." 
 
 " Well, I'll tell you what we'll do ; we'll have tea first, and 
 then we'll ride back with Mr. Dysart ; will that do you ? " 
 
 " I wanted to ride in the opposite direction," said 
 Lambert ; " I had some business " 
 
 " Oh, bother your old business ! " interrupted Francie ; 
 " anyway, I hear her bringing in the tea." 
 
 " Oh, I hope you'll ride home with me," said Christopher; 
 " I hate riding by myself." 
 
 " Much I pity you ! " said Francie, flashing a side-long 
 look at him as she went over to the tea-table ; " I sup- 
 pose you'd be frightened ! " 
 
 " Quite so. Frightened and bored. That is what I feel 
 like when I ride by myself," said Christopher, trying to 
 eliminate from his manner the constraint that Lambert's 
 
204 Tke Real Charlotte. 
 
 arrival had imparted to it, " and my horse is just as bored ; 
 I feel apologetic all the time and wishing I could do some- 
 thing to amuse him that wouldn't be dangerous. Do come ; 
 I'm sure he'd like it." 
 
 " Oh, how anxious you are about him ! " said Francie, 
 cutting bread and butter with a dexterous hand from the 
 loaf that Louisa had placed on the table in frank confession 
 of incapacity. " I don't know what I'll do till I've had my 
 tea. Here now, here's yours poured out for both of you ; I 
 suppose you'd like me to come and hand it to you ! " with a 
 propitiatory look at Lambert. 
 
 Thus adjured, the two men seated themselves at the table, 
 on which Francie had prepared their tea and bread and 
 butter with a propriety that reminded Christopher of his 
 nursery days. It was a very agreeable feeling, he thought ; 
 and as he docilely drank his tea and laughed at Francie for 
 the amount of sugar that she put into hers, the idealising 
 process to which he was unconsciously subjecting her ad- 
 vanced a stage. He was beginning to lose sight of her vul- 
 garity, even to wonder at himself for ever having applied that 
 crudely inappropriate word to her. She had some reflected 
 vulgarities of course, thought the usually hypercritical Mr. 
 Christopher Dysart, and her literary progress along the lines 
 he had laid down for her was slow ; but, lately, since his 
 missionary resolve to let the light of culture illuminate her 
 darkness, he had found out subtle depths of sweetness and 
 sympathy that were, in their responsiveness, equivalent to 
 intellect. 
 
 When Francie went up a few minutes later to put on her 
 habit, Christopher did not seem disposed to continue the 
 small talk in which his proficiency had been more surprising 
 than pleasing to Mr. Lambert. 
 
 He strolled over to the window, and looked meditatively 
 out at Mrs. Bruff and a great-grandchild or two embowered 
 in a tangle of nasturtiums, and putting his hands in his 
 pockets began to whistle sotto voce. Lambert looked him 
 up and down, from his long thin legs to his small head, on 
 which the light brown hair grew rather long, with a wave in 
 it that was to Lambert the height of effeminacy. He began 
 to drum with his fingers on the table to show that he too 
 was quite undisturbed and at his ease. 
 
The Real Charlotte. 205 
 
 " By the bye, Dysart," he observed presently, " have you 
 heard anything of Hawkins since he left ? " 
 
 Christopher turned round. " No, I don't know anything 
 about him except that he's gone to Hythe." 
 
 " Gone to hide> d'ye say ? " Lambert laughed noisily in 
 support of his own joke. 
 
 " No, Hythe." 
 
 " It seems to me its more likely it's a case of hide," 
 Lambert went on with a wink ; he paused, fiddled with his 
 teaspoon, and smiled at his own hand as he did so. 
 " Praps he thought it was time for him to get out of this." 
 
 " Really?" said Christopher, with a lack of interest that 
 was quite genuine. 
 
 Lambert's pulse bounded with the sudden desire to wake 
 this supercilious young hound up for once, by telling him a 
 few things that would surprise him, 
 
 " Well, you see it's a pretty strong order for a fellow to 
 carry on as Hawkins did, when he happens to be engaged.' 
 
 The fact of Mr. Hawkins' engagement had, it need 
 scarcely be said, made its way through every highway and 
 byway of Lismoyle ; inscrutable as to its starting-point, im 
 possible of verification, but all the more fascinating for its 
 mystery. Lambert had no wish to claim its authorship ; he 
 had lived among gentlemen long enough to be aware that 
 the second-hand confidences of a servant could not credit- 
 ably be quoted by him. What he did not know, however, 
 was whether the story had reached Bruff, or been believed 
 there, and it was extremely provoking to him now that in- 
 stead of being able to observe its effect on Christopher, 
 whose back was to the light, his discoveries should be 
 limited to the fact that his own face had become very red 
 as he spoke. 
 
 "I suppose he knows his own affairs best," said Christopher, 
 after a silence that might have meant anything, or nothing. 
 
 " Well," leaning back and putting his hands in his pockets, 
 " I don't pretend to be strait-laced, but d n it, you know, 
 I think Hawkins went a bit too far." 
 
 " I don't think I have heard who it is that he is engaged 
 to," said Christopher, who seemed remarkably unaffected by 
 Mr. Hawkins' misdemeanours. 
 
 " Oh, to a Yorkshire girl, a Miss what's this her name 
 
206 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 is ? Coppard. Pots of money, but mighty plain about the 
 head, I believe. He kept it pretty dark, didn't he ? " 
 
 " Apparently it got out, for all that." 
 
 Lambert thought he detected a tinge of ridicule in the 
 voice, whether of him or of Hawkins he did not know ; it 
 gave just the necessary spur to that desire to open 
 Christopher's eyes for him a bit. 
 
 " Oh, yes, it got out," he said, putting his elbow on the 
 table, and balancing his teaspoon on his forefinger, " but I 
 think there are very few that know for certain it's a fact, 
 fortunately for our friend." 
 
 "Why fortunately? I shouldn't think it made much 
 difference to anyone." 
 
 " Well, as a rule, girls don't care to flirt with an engaged 
 man." 
 
 " No, I suppose not," said Christopher, yawning with a 
 frankness that was a singular episode in his demeanour 
 towards his agent. 
 
 Lambert felt his temper rising every instant. He was a 
 man whose jealousy took the form of reviling the object of 
 his affections, if, by so doing, he could detach his rivals. 
 
 " Well, Francie Fitzpatrick knows it for one ; but perhaps 
 she's not one of the girls who object to flirting with an 
 engaged man." 
 
 Lambert got up and walked to the window ; he felt that 
 he could no longer endure seeing nothing of Christopher 
 except a lank silhouette with an offensive repose of attitude. 
 He propped his back against one of the shutters, and 
 obviously waited for a comment. 
 
 " I should think it was an inexpensive amusement," said 
 Christopher, in his most impersonal and academic manner, 
 " but likely to pall." 
 
 " Pall ! Deuce a bit of it ! " Lambert put a toothpick in 
 his mouth, and began to chew it, to convey the effect of 
 ease. " I can tell you I've known that girl since she was 
 the length of my stick, and I never saw her that she wasn't 
 up to some game or other ; and she wasn't over particular 
 about engagements or anything else ! " 
 
 Christopher slightly shifted his position, but did not 
 speak, and Lambert went on : 
 
 " I'm very fond of the girl, and she's a good-hearted little 
 
The Real Charlotte. 207 
 
 thing ; but, by Jove ! I was sorry to see the way she went 
 on with that fellow Hawkins. Here he was, morning, noon, 
 and night, walking with her, and steam-launching, and 
 spooning, and setting all the old women in the place prat- 
 ing. I spoke to her about it, and much thanks I got, 
 though there was a time she was ready enough to mind 
 what I said to her." During this recital Mr. Lambert's 
 voice had been deficient in the accent of gentlemanlike 
 self importance that in calmer moments he was careful to 
 impart to it, and the raw Limerick brogue was on top as he 
 said, " Yes, by George ! I remember the time when she wasn't 
 above fancying your humble servant ! " 
 
 He had almost forgotten his original idea ; his own 
 position, long brooded over, rose up out of all proportion, 
 and confused his mental perspective, till Christopher 
 Dysart's opinions were lost sight of. He was recalled to 
 himself by a startling expression on the face of his con- 
 fidant, an expression of almost unconcealed disgust, that 
 checked effectively any further outpourings. Christopher 
 did not look at him again, but turned from the window, 
 and, taking up Miss Mullen's photograph-book, proceeded 
 to a minute inspection of its contents. Neither he nor 
 Lambert quite knew what would happen next, each in his 
 own way being angry enough for any emergency, and both 
 felt an extreme relief when Francie's abrupt entrance closed 
 the situation. 
 
 " Well, I wasn't long now, was I ? " she said breathlessly ; 
 " but what'll I do ? I can't find my gloves ! " She swept 
 out of the corner of the sofa a cat that had been slumbering 
 unseen behind a cushion. " Here they are ! and full of 
 fleas, I'll be bound, after Clementina sleeping on them ! 
 Oh, goodness ! Are both of you too angry to speak to me? 
 I didn't think I was so long. Come on out to the yard ; 
 you can't say I'm keeping you now." 
 
 She whirled out of the room, and by the time Lambert 
 and Christopher got into the yard, she had somehow 
 dragged the black mare out of the cow-shed and was 
 clambering on to her back with the aid of a wheel-barrow. 
 
 Riding has many charms, but none of its eulogists have 
 properly dwelt on the advantages it offers to the unconver- 
 sational. To ride in silence is the least marked form of un- 
 
208 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 sociability, for something of the same reason that talking on 
 horseback is one of the pleasantest modes of converse. 
 The power of silence cuts both ways, and simplifies either 
 confidence or its reverse amazingly. It so happened, how- 
 ever, that had Lambert had the inclination to make himself 
 agreeable to his companions he could not have done so. 
 Christopher's carriage-horse trotted with the machine-like 
 steadiness of its profession, and the black mare, roused to 
 emulation, flew along beside him, ignoring the feebly 
 expressed desire of her rider that she should moderate her 
 pace. Christopher, indeed, seldom knew or cared at what 
 pace his horse was going ; and was now by no means sorry 
 to find that the question of riding along with Lambert had 
 been settled for him. The rough, young chestnut was filled 
 with a vain-glory that scorned to trot, and after a great deal 
 of brilliant ramping and curveting he fell into a kind of 
 heraldic action, half-canter, half-walk, that left him more 
 and more hopelessly in the rear, and raised Lambert's 
 temper to boiling point. 
 
 " We're going very fast, aren't we ? * panted Francie, try- 
 ing to push down her rebellious habit-skirt with her whip, 
 as they sped along the flat road between Lismoyle and 
 Bruff. " I'm afraid Mr. Lambert can't keep up. That's a 
 dreadfully wild horse he's riding." 
 
 "Are we?" said Christopher vaguely. "Shall we pull 
 up ? Here, woa, you brute ! " He pulled the carriage- 
 horse into a walk, and looked at Francie with a laugh. 
 " I'm beginning to hope you're as bad a rider as I am," he 
 said sympathetically. " Let me hold your reins, while 
 you're pinning up that plait." 
 
 " Oh, botheration take it ! Is my hair down again ? It 
 always comes down if I trot fast," bewailed Francie, putting 
 up her hands to her dishevelled hair, that sparkled like gold 
 in the sun; 
 
 " Do you know, the first time I ever saw you, your hair 
 had come down out riding," said Christopher, looking at 
 her as he held her rein, and not giving a thought to the in- 
 timate appearance they presented to the third membei of the 
 party; " if I were you I should start with it down my back." 
 
 " Ah, nonsense, Mr. Dysart ; why would you have me 
 make a Judy of myself that way ? " 
 
The Real Charlotte. 
 
 " Because it's the loveliest hair I've ever seen," answered 
 Christopher, the words coming to his lips almost without his 
 volition, and in their utterance causing his heart to give one 
 or two unexpected throbs. 
 
 " Oh ! " There was as much astonishment as pleasure 
 in the exclamation, and she became as red as fire. She 
 turned her head away, and looked back to see where Lam- 
 bert was. 
 
 She had heard from Hawkins only this morning, asking 
 her for a piece of the hair that Christopher had called 
 lovely. She had cut off a little curl from the place he had 
 specified, near her temple, and had posted it to him this 
 very afternoon after Charlotte went out ; but all the things 
 that Hawkins had said of her hair did not seem to her so 
 wonderful as that Mr. Dysart should pay her a compli- 
 ment. 
 
 Lambert was quite silent after he joined them. In his 
 heart he was cursing everything and everyone, the chestnut, 
 Christopher, Francie, and most of all himself, for having 
 said the things that he had said. All the good he had 
 done was to leave no doubt in Christopher's mind that 
 Hawkins was out of the running, and as for telling him that 
 Francie was a flirt, an ass like that didn't so much as know 
 the meaning of the word flirting. He knew now that he 
 had made a fool of himself, and the remembrance of that 
 disgusted expression on Christopher's face made his bettef 
 judgment return as burningly as the blood into veins 
 numbed with cold. At the cross-roads next before Bruff, he 
 broke in upon the exchange of experiences of the Dublin 
 theatres that was going on very enjoyably beside him. 
 
 ' I'm afraid we must part company here, Dysart," he said 
 in as civil a voice as he could muster ; " I want to speak to 
 a farmer who lives down this way." 
 
 Christopher made his farewells, and rode slowly down 
 the hill towards Bruff. It was a hill that had been cut 
 down in the Famine, so that the fields on either side rose 
 high above its level, and the red poppies and yellowing corn 
 nodded into the sky over his head. The bay Ahorse was 
 collecting himself for a final trot to the avenue gates, when 
 he found himself stopped, and, after a moment of hesitation 
 on the part of his rider, was sent up the hill again a good 
 
 o 
 
210 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 deal faster than he had come down. Christopher pulled up 
 again on the top of the hill. He was higher now than the 
 corn, and, looking across its multitudinous, rustling surface, 
 he saw the figure that some errant impulse had made him 
 come back to see. Francie's head was turned towards 
 Lambert, and she was evidently talking to him. Christopher's 
 eyes followed the pair till they were out of sight, and then 
 he again turned his horse, and went home to Bruff. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 ONE fine morning towards the end of August, Julia Duffy 
 was sitting on a broken chair in her kitchen, with her hands 
 in her lap, and her bloodshot eyes fixed on vacancy. She 
 was so quiet that a party of ducks, which had hung uncer- 
 tainly about the open door for some time, filed slowly in, 
 and began to explore an empty pot or two with their long, 
 dirty bills. The ducks knew well that Miss Duffy, though 
 satisfied to accord the freedom of the kitchen to the hens 
 and turkeys, had drawn the line at them and their cousins 
 the geese, and they adventured themselves within the for- 
 bidden limits with the utmost caution, and with many side 
 glances from their blinking, beady eyes at the motionless 
 figure in the chair. They had made their way to a plate of 
 potato skins and greasy cabbage on the floor by the table, 
 and, forgetful of prudence, were clattering their bills on the 
 delf as they gobbled, when an arm was stretched out above 
 their heads, and they fled in cumbrous consternation. 
 
 The arm, however, was not stretched out in menace; 
 Julia Duffy had merely extended it to take a paper from the 
 table, and having done so, she looked at its contents in en- 
 tire obliviousness of the ducks and their maraudings. Her 
 misfortunes were converging. It was not a week since she 
 had heard of the proclaimed insolvency of the man who had 
 taken the grazing of Gurthnamuckla, and it was not half an 
 hour since she had been struck by this last arrow of out- 
 rageous fortune, the letter threatening to process her for the 
 long arrears of rent that she had felt lengthening hopelessly 
 with every sunrise and sunset. She looked round the dreary 
 kitchen that had about it all the added desolation of past 
 
The Real Oiarlotte. 211 
 
 respectability, at the rusty hooks from which she could re- 
 member the portly hams and flitches of bacon hanging ; at 
 the big fire-place where her grandfather's Sunday sirloin 
 used to be roasted. Now cobwebs dangled from the hooks, 
 and the old grate had fallen to pieces, so that the few sods 
 of turf smouldered on the hearthstone. Everything spoke 
 of bygone plenty and present wretchedness. 
 
 Julia put the letter into its envelope again and groaned a 
 long miserable groan. She got up and stood for a minute, 
 staring out of the open door with her hands on her hips, and 
 then went slowly and heavily up the stairs, groaning again 
 to herself from the exertion and from the blinding headache 
 that made her feel as though her brain were on fire. She 
 went into her room and changed her filthy gown for the 
 stained and faded black rep that hung on the door. From 
 a band-box of tanned antiquity she took a black bonnet that 
 had first seen the light at her mother's funeral, and tied its 
 clammy satin strings with shaking hands. Flashes of light 
 came and went before her eyes, and her pallid face was 
 flushed painfully as she went downstairs again, and finding, 
 after long search, the remains of the bottle of blacking, 
 laboriously cleaned her only pair of boots. She was going 
 out of the house when her eye fell upon the plate from which 
 the ducks had been eating; she came back for it, and, taking 
 it out with her, scattered its contents to the turkeys, me- 
 chanically holding her dress up out of the dirt as she did so. 
 She left the plate on the kitchen window-sill, and set slowly 
 forth down the avenue. 
 
 Under the tree by the gate, Billy Grainy was sitting, en- 
 gaged, as was his custom in moments of leisure, in counting 
 the coppers in the bag that hung round his neck. He 
 looked in amazement at the unexpected appearance of his 
 patroness, and as she approached him he pushed the bag 
 under his shirt. 
 
 " Where are ye goin' ? " he asked. 
 
 Julia did not answer ; she fumbled blindly with the bit ot 
 stick that fastened the gate, and, having opened it, went on 
 without attempting to shut it. 
 
 " Where are ye goin' at all ? " said Billy again, his bleared 
 eyes following the unfamiliar outline of bonnet and gown. 
 
 Without turning, she said, " Lismoyle," and as she walked 
 
212 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 on along the sunny road, she put up her hand and tried to 
 wipe away the tears that were running down her face. Per- 
 haps it was the excitement with which every nerve was 
 trembling that made the three miles to Rosemount seem as 
 nothing to this woman, who, for the last six months, had 
 been too ill to go beyond her own gate ; and probably it was 
 the same unnatural strength that prevented her from break- 
 ing down, when, with her mind full of ready-framed sentences 
 that were to touch Mr. Lambert's heart and appeal to his 
 sense of justice, she heard from Mary Holloran at the gate 
 that he was away for a couple of days to Limerick. With- 
 out replying to Mary Holloran's exclamations of pious horror 
 at the distance she had walked, and declining all offers of 
 rest or food, she turned and walked on towards Lismoyle. 
 
 She had suddenly determined to herself that she would 
 walk to Bruff and see her landlord, and this new idea took 
 such possession of her that she did not realise at first the 
 magnitude of the attempt. But by the time she had reached 
 the gate of Tally Ho the physical power that her impulse 
 gave her began to be conscious of its own limits. The 
 flashes were darting like lightning before her eyes, and the 
 nausea that was her constant companion robbed her of her 
 energy. After a moment of hesitation she decided that she 
 would go in and see her kinswoman, Norry the Boat, and 
 get a glass of water from her before going further. It 
 wounded her pride somewhat to go round to the kitchen 
 she, whose grandfather had been on nearly the same social 
 level as Miss Mullen's ; but Charlotte was the last person 
 she wished to meet just then. Norry opened the kitchen 
 door, beginning, as she did so, her usual snarling maledic- 
 tions on the supposed beggar, which, however, were lost in 
 a loud invocation of her patron saint as she recognised her 
 first cousin, Miss Duffy. 
 
 " And is it to leg it in from Gurthnamuckla ye done ? " 
 said Norry, when the first greetings had been exchanged, 
 and Julia was seated in the kitchen, " and you looking as 
 white as the dhrivelling snow this minnit." 
 
 " I did," said Julia feebly, " and I'd be thankful to you 
 for a drink of water. The day's very close." 
 
 ' ( Faith ye'll get no wather in this house," returned Norry 
 in grim hospitality j " I'll give you a sup of milk, 01 would 
 
The Real Charlotte. 213 
 
 it be too much delay on ye to wait till I bile the kittle for a 
 cup o' tay ? Bad cess to Bid Sal ! There isn't as much hot 
 wather in the house this minute as'd write yer name ! " 
 
 " I'm obliged to ye, Norry," said Julia stiffly, her sick pride 
 evolving a supposition that she could be in want of food ; 
 "but I'm only after my breakfast myself. Indeed," she 
 added, assuming from old habit her usual attitude of medical 
 adviser, " you'd be the better yourself for taking less tea." 
 
 11 Is it me ? " replied Norry indignantly. " I take me cup 
 o' tay morning and evening, and if 'twas throwing afther me 
 I wouldn't take more." 
 
 " Give me the cold wather, anyway," said Julia wearily ; 
 " I must go on out of this. It's to Bruff I'm going." 
 
 " In the name o' God what's taking ye into Bruff, you 
 that should be in yer bed, in place of sthreelin' through the 
 counthry this way ? " 
 
 " I got a letter from Lambert to-day," said Julia, putting 
 her hand to her aching head, as if to collect herself, " and I 
 want to speak to Sir Benjamin about it." 
 
 " Ah, God help yer foolish head ! " said Norry impatiently ; 
 " sure ye might as well be talking to the bird above there," 
 pointing to the cockatoo, who was looking down at them 
 with ghostly solemnity. "The owld fellow's light in his 
 head this long while." 
 
 " Then I'll see some of the family," said Julia ; " they 
 remember my fawther well, and the promise I had about the 
 farm, and they'll not see me wronged." 
 
 "Throth, then, that's thrue," said Norry, with an un- 
 wonted burst of admiration ; " they was always and ever a 
 fine family, and thim that they takes in their hands has 
 the luck o' God ! But what did Lambert say t'ye ? " with 
 a keen glance at her visitor from under her heavy eye- 
 brows. 
 
 Julia hesitated for a moment. 
 
 " Norry Kelly/' she said, her voice shaking a little; " if 
 it wasn't that you're me own mother's sister's child, I would 
 not reveal to you the disgrace that man is trying to put 
 upon me. I got a letter from him this morning saying he'd 
 process me if I didn't pay him at once the half of what's 
 due. And Joyce that has the grazing is bankrupt, and owes 
 me what I'll never get from him." 
 
214 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 " Blast his sowl ! " interjected Norry, who was peeling 
 onions with furious speed. 
 
 " I know there's manny would be thankful to take the 
 grazing," continued Julia, passing a dingy pocket handker- 
 chief over her forehead ; " but who knows when I'd be paid 
 for it, and Lambert will have me out on the road before 
 that if I don't give him the rent." 
 
 Norry looked to see whether both the kitchen doors were 
 shut, and then, putting both her hands on the table, leaned 
 across towards her cousin. 
 
 " Herself wants it," she said in a whisper. 
 
 " Wants what ? What are you saying ? " 
 
 "Wants the farm, I tell ye, and it's her that's driving 
 Lambert." 
 
 " Is it Charlotte Mullen ? " asked Julia, in a scarcely 
 audible voice. 
 
 " Now ye have it," said Norry, returning to her onions, 
 and shutting her mouth tightly. 
 
 The cockatoo gave a sudden piercing screech, like a 
 note of admiration. Julia half got up, and then sank back 
 into her chair. 
 
 " Are ye sure of that ? " 
 
 " As sure as I have two feet," replied Norry, " and I'll 
 tell ye what she's afther it for. It's to go live in it, and to 
 let on she's as grand as the other ladies in the counthry." 
 
 Julia clenched the bony, discoloured hand that lay on the 
 table. 
 
 " Before I saw her in it I'd burn it over my 
 head ! " 
 
 " Not a word out o' ye about what I tell ye," went on 
 Norry in the same ominous whisper. " Shure she have it 
 all mapped this minnit, the same as a pairson'd be makin' a 
 watch. She's sthriving to make a match with young Misther 
 Dysart and Miss Francie, and b'leeve you me, 'twill be a 
 quare thing if she'll let him go from her. Sure he's the 
 gentlest crayture ever came into a house, and he's that 
 innocent he wouldn't think how cute she was. If ye'd seen 
 her, ere yestherday, follying him down to the gate, and she 
 smilin' up at him as sweet as honey ! The way it'll be, 
 she'll sell Tally Ho house for a fortune for Miss Francie, 
 though, indeed, it's little fortune himself 11 ax ! " 
 
The Real Charlotte. 215 
 
 The words drove heavily through the pain of Julia's 
 head, and their meaning followed at an interval. 
 
 " Why would she give a fortune to the likes of her ? " she 
 asked ; " isn't it what the people say, it's only for a chanty 
 she has her here ? " 
 
 Norry gave her own peculiar laugh of derision, a laugh 
 with a snort in it. 
 
 "Sharity! It's little sharity ye'll get from that one! 
 Didn't I hear the old misthress tellin' her, and she sthretched 
 for death and Miss Charlotte knows well I heard her say 
 it * Charlotte,' says she, and her knees, dhrawn up in the 
 bed, 'Francie must have her share.' And that was the 
 lasht word she spoke." Norry 's large wild eyes roved sky- 
 wards out of the window as the scene rose before her. " God 
 rest her soul, 'tis she got the death aisy ! " 
 
 < That Charlotte Mullen may get it hard ! " said Julia 
 savagely. She got up, feeling new strength in her tired 
 limbs, though her head was reeling strangely, and she had 
 to grasp at the kitchen table to keep herself steady. 
 "I'll go on now. If I die for it I'll go to Bruff this 
 day." 
 
 Norry dropped the onion she was peeling, and placed 
 herself between Julia and the door. 
 
 " The divil a toe will ye put out of this kitchen," she 
 said, flourishing her knife; " is it you walk to Bruff?" 
 
 " I must go to Bruff," said Julia again, almost mechani- 
 cally ; " but if you could give me a taste of sperrits, I think 
 I'd be better able for the road." 
 
 Norry pulled open a drawer, and took from the back of 
 it a bottle containing a colourless liquid. 
 
 " Drink this to your health ! " she said in Irish, giving 
 some in a mug to Julia ; " it's potheen I got from friends of 
 me own, back in Curraghduff." She put her hand into the 
 drawer again, and after a little search produced from the 
 centre of a bundle of amorphous rags a cardboard box 
 covered with shells. Julia heard, without heeding it, the 
 clink of money, and then three shillings were slapped down 
 on the table beside her. " Ye'll go to Conolly's now, and 
 get a car to dhrive ye," said Norry defiantly ; " or howld on 
 till I send Bid Sal to get it for ye. Not a word out o' ye 
 now ! Sure, don't I know well a pairson wouldn't think to 
 
216 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 put his money in his pocket whin he'd be hasting that way 
 lavin' his house." 
 
 She did not wait for an answer, but shuffled to the scul- 
 lery door, and began to scream for Bid Sal in her usual 
 tones of acrid ill-temper. As she returned to the kitchen, 
 Julia met her at the door. Her yellow face, that Norry 
 had likened by courtesy to the driven snow, was now very 
 red, and her eyes had a hot stare in them. 
 
 " I'm obliged to you, Norry Kelly," she said, " but when 
 I'm in need of charity I'll ask for it. Let me out, if you 
 please." 
 
 The blast of fury with which Norry was preparing to 
 reply was checked by a rattle of wheels in the yard, and 
 Bid Sal appeared with the intelligence that Jimmy Daly was 
 come over with the Bruff cart, and Norry was to go out to 
 speak to him. When she came back she had a basket of 
 grapes in one hand and a brace of grouse in the other, and 
 as she put them down on the table, she informed her cousin, 
 with distant politeness, that Jimmy Daly would drive her to 
 Bruff. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 THE drive in the spring-cart was the first moment of com- 
 parative ease from suffering that Julia had known that day. 
 Her tormented brain was cooled by the soft steady rush of 
 air in her face, and the mouthful of " potheen " that she had 
 drunk had at first the effect of dulling all her perceptions. 
 The cart drove up the back avenue, and at the yard gate 
 Julia asked the man to put her down. She clambered out 
 of the cart with great difficulty, and going round to the hall 
 door, went toilfully up the steps and rang the bell. Sir 
 Benjamin was out, Lady Dysart was out, Mr. Dysart was 
 out ; so Gorman told her, with a doubtful look at the black 
 Sunday gown that seemed to him indicative of the bearer of 
 a begging petition, and he did not know when they would 
 be in. He shut the door, and Julia went slowly down the 
 steps again. 
 
 She had begun to walk mechanically away from the house, 
 when she saw Sir Benjamin in his chair coming up a side 
 walk. His face, with its white hair, gold spectacles, and 
 
The Real Charlotte. 217 
 
 tall hat, looked so sane and dignified, that, in spite of what 
 Norry had said, she determined to carry out her first 
 intention of speaking to him. She shivered, though the 
 sun blazed hotly down upon her, as she walked towards the 
 chair, not from nervousness, but from the creeping sense of 
 illness, and the ground rose up in front of her as if she were 
 going up-hill. She made a low bow to her landlord, and 
 James Canavan, who knew her by sight, stopped the onward 
 course of the chair. 
 
 " I wish to speak to you on an important matter, Sir 
 Benjamin," began Julia in her best voice ; " I was unable 
 to see your agent, so I determined to come to yourself." 
 
 The gold spectacles were turned upon her fixedly, and 
 the expression of the eyes behind them was more intelligent 
 than usual. 
 
 " Begad, that's one of the tenants, Jajnes," said Sir 
 Benjamin, looking up at his attendant. 
 
 " Certainly, Sir Benjamin, certainly ; this lady is Miss 
 Duffy, from Gurthnamuckla," replied the courtly James 
 Canavan. " An old tenant, I might almost say an old friend 
 of your honour's." 
 
 "And what the devil brings her here?" inquired Sir 
 Benjamin, glowering at her under the wide brim of his hat. 
 
 "Sir Benjamin," began Julia again, "I know your 
 memory's failing you, but you might remember that after 
 the death of my father, Hubert Duffy " Julia felt all the 
 Protestant and aristocratic associations of the name as she 
 said it "you made a promise to me in your office that I 
 should never be disturbed in my holding of the land." 
 
 " Devil so ugly a man as Hubert Duffy ever I saw," said 
 Sir Benjamin, with a startling flight of memory ; " and you're 
 his daughter, are you? Begad, the dairymaid didn't dis- 
 tinguish herself ! " 
 
 "Yes, I am his daughter, Sir Benjamin," replied Julia, 
 catching at this flattering recognition. " I and my family 
 have always lived on your estate, and my grandfather has 
 often had the honour of entertaining you and the rest of the 
 gentry, when they came fox-hunting through Gurthnamuckla 
 I am certain that it is by no wish of yours, or of your kind 
 and honourable son, Mr. Christopher, that your agent is 
 pairsecuting me to make me leave the farm " Her voice 
 
218 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 failed her, partly from the suffocating anger that rose in her 
 at her own words, and partly from a dizziness that made the 
 bath-chair, Sir Benjamin, and James Canavan, float up and 
 down in the air before her. 
 
 Sir Benjamin suddenly began to brandish his stick. 
 " What the devil is she saying about Christopher ? What 
 has Christopher to say to my tenants. D n his insolence ! 
 He ought to be at school ! " 
 
 The remarkable grimaces which James Canavan made 
 at Julia from the back of the bath-chair informed her that 
 she had lighted upon the worst possible method of in- 
 gratiating herself with her landlord, but the information 
 came too late. 
 
 " Send that woman away, James Canavan ! " he screamed, 
 making sweeps at her with his oak stick. " She shall never 
 put her d d splay foot upon my av<*nue again. I'll thrash 
 her and Christopher out of the place ! Turn her out, I tell 
 you, James Canavan ! " 
 
 Julia stood motionless and aghast beyond the reach of the 
 stick, until James Canavan motioned to her to move aside ; 
 she staggered back among the long arms of a lignum vita^ 
 and the bath-chair, with its still cursing, gesticulating 
 occupant, went by her at a round pace. Then she came 
 slowly and uncertainly out on to the path again, and looked 
 after the chariot wheels of the Caesar to whom she had 
 appealed. 
 
 James Canavan's coat-tails were standing out behind him 
 as he drove the bath-chair round the corner of the path, and 
 Sir Benjamin's imprecations came faintly back to her as she 
 stood waiting till the throbbing giddiness should cease suffi- 
 ciently for her to begin the homeward journey that stretched, 
 horrible and impossible, before her. Her head ached 
 wildly, and as she walked down the avenue she found herself 
 stumbling against the edge of the grass, now on one side 
 and now on the other. She said to herself that the people 
 would say she was drunk, but she didn't care now what they 
 said. It would be shortly till they saw her a disgraced 
 woman, with the sheriff coming to put her out of her 
 father's house on to the road. She gave a hard, short sob as 
 this occurred to her, and she wondered if she would have 
 the good luck to die, supposing she let herself fall down on 
 
The Real Charlotte. 219 
 
 the grass, and lay there in the burning sun and took no 
 more trouble about anything. Her thoughts came to her 
 slowly and with great difficulty, but, once come, they whirled 
 and hammered in her brain with the reiteration of chiming 
 bells. She walked on, out of the gate, and along the road 
 to Lismoyle, mechanically going in the shade where there 
 was any, and avoiding the patches of broken stones, as pos- 
 sibly a man might who was walking out to be shot, but 
 apathetically unconscious of what was happening. 
 
 At about this time the person whose name Julia Duffy 
 had so unfortunately selected to conjure with was sitting 
 under a tree on the slope opposite the hall door at Tally 
 Ho, reading aloud a poem of Rossetti's. 
 
 \ 
 
 " Her eyes were like the wave within, 
 
 Like water reeds the poise 
 Of her soft body, dainty thin ; 
 And like the water's noise 
 Her plaintive voice. 
 
 *' For him the stream had never welled 
 
 In desert tracts malign 
 So sweet ; nor had he ever felt 
 So faint in the sunshine 
 Of Palestine." 
 
 Francie's attention, which had revived at the description 
 of the Queen, began to wander again. The sound in 
 Christopher's voice told that the words were touching some- 
 thing deeper than his literary perception, and her 4 sympathy 
 answered to the tone, though the drift of the poem was dark 
 to her. The music of the lines had just power enough upon 
 her ear to predispose her to sentiment, and at present, senti- 
 ment with Francie meant the tender repose of her soul 
 upon the thought of Mr. Gerald Hawkins. 
 
 A pause at turning over a leaf recalled her again to the 
 fact of Christopher, with a transition not altogether unpleas- 
 ant ; she looked down at him as he lay on the grass, and 
 began to wonder, as she had several times wondered before, 
 if he really were in lore with her. Nothing seemed more 
 unlikely. Francie admitted it to herself as she watched his 
 eyes following the lines in complete absorption, and knew 
 
220 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 that she had neither part nor lot in the things that touched 
 him most nearly. 
 
 But the facts were surprising, there was no denying that. 
 Even without Charlotte to tell her so she was aware that 
 Christopher detested the practice of paying visits even more 
 sincerely than most men, and was certainly not in the habit 
 of visiting in Lismoyle. Except to see her, there was no 
 reason that could bring him to Tally Ho. Surer than all 
 fact, however, and rising superior to mere logic, was her in- 
 stinctive comprehension of men and their ways, and some- 
 times she was almost sure that he came, not from kindness, 
 or from that desire to improve her mind which she had 
 discerned and compassionated, but because he could not 
 help himself. She had arrived at one of these thrilling 
 moments of certainty when Christopher's voice ceased upon 
 the words, " Thy jealous God," and she knew that the time 
 had come for her to say something appropriate. 
 
 " Oh thank you, Mr. Dysart that's that's awfully pretty. 
 It's a sort of religious thing, isn't it ? " 
 
 " Yes, I suppose so," answered Christopher, looking at her 
 with a wavering smile, and feeling as if he had stepped sud- 
 denly to the ground out of a dream of flying ; " the hero's 
 a pilgrim, and that's always something." 
 
 " I know a lovely song called ' The Pilgrim of Love,' " 
 said Francie timidly ; " of course it wasn't the same thing 
 as what you were reading, but it was awfully nice too." 
 
 Christopher looked up at her, and was almost convinced 
 that she must have absorbed something of the sentiment if 
 not the sense of what he had read, her face was so sympa- 
 thetic and responsive. With that expression in her limpid 
 eyes it gave him a peculiar sensation to hear her say the 
 name of Love ; it was even a delight, and fired his imagina- 
 tion with the picturing of what it would be like to hear her 
 say it with all her awakened soul. He might have said 
 something that would have suggested his feeling, in the 
 fragmentary, inferential manner that Francie never knew 
 what to make of, but that her eyes strayed away at a click 
 of the latch of the avenue gate, and lost their unworldliness 
 in the sharp and easy glance that is the unvalued privilege 
 of the keen-sighted. 
 
 " Who in the name of goodness is this ? " she said, sitting 
 
The Real Charlotte. 221 
 
 up and gazing at a black figure in the avenue ; ' * it's some 
 woman or other, but she looks very queer." 
 
 " I can't see that it matters much who it is," said Christo- 
 pher irritably, " so long as she doesn't come up here, and 
 she probably will if you let her see you." 
 
 " Mercy on us ! she looks awful ! " exclaimed Francie 
 incautiously ; " why, it's Miss Duffy, and her face as red as 
 I don't know what oh, she's seen us ! " 
 
 The voice had evidently reached Julia Duffy's ears ; she 
 came stumbling on, with her eyes fixed on the light blue 
 dress under the beech tree, and when Christopher had 
 turned, and got his eye-glass up, she was standing at the 
 foot of the slope, looking at him with a blurred recognition. 
 
 " Mr. Dysart," she said in a hoarse voice, that, com- 
 bined with her flushed face and staring eyes, made Christo 
 pher think she was drunk, " Sir Benjamin has driven me 
 out of his place like a beggar ; me, whose family is as long 
 on his estate as himself; and his agent wants to drive me 
 out of my farm that was promised to me by your father I 
 should never be disturbed in it." 
 
 " You're Miss Duffy from Gurthnamuckla, are you not ? " 
 interrupted Christopher, eyeing her with natural disfavour, 
 as he got up and came down the slope towards her. 
 
 " I am, Mr. Dysart, I am," she said defiantly, " and you 
 and your family have a right to know me, and I ask you to 
 do me justice, that I shall not be turned out into the ditch 
 for the sake of a lying double-faced schemer " Her voice 
 failed, as it had failed before when she spoke to Sir 
 Benjamin, and the action of her hand that carried on her 
 meaning had a rage in it that hid its despair, 
 
 "I think if you have anything to say you had better 
 write it," said Christopher, beginning to think that Lambert 
 had some excuse for his opinion of Miss Duffy, but begin- 
 ning also to pity what he thought was a spectacle of miser- 
 able middle-aged drunkenness ; " you may be sure that no 
 injustice will be done to you " 
 
 " Is it injustice ? " broke in Julia, while the fever cloud 
 seemed to roll its weight back for a moment from her brain ; 
 " maybe you'd say there was injustice if you knew all I 
 know. Where's Charlotte Mullen, till I tell her to her face 
 that I know her plots and her thricks ? Tis to say that to 
 
222 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 her I came here, and to tell her 'twas she lent money to 
 Peter Joyce that was grazing my farm, and refused it to him 
 secondly, the way he'd go bankrupt on me, and she's to have 
 my farm and my house that my grandfather built, thinking 
 to even herself with the rest of the gentry " 
 
 Her voice had become wilder and louder, and Christopher, 
 uncomfortably aware that Francie could hear this indictment 
 of Miss Mullen as distinctly as he did, intervened again. 
 
 " Look here, Miss Duffy," he said in a lower voice, " it's 
 no use talking like this. If I can help you I will, but it 
 would be a good deal better if you went home now. You 
 you seem ill, and it's a great mistake to stay here exciting 
 yourself and making a noise. Write to me, and I'll see that 
 you get fair play." 
 
 Julia threw back her head and laughed, with a venom 
 that seemed too concentrated for drunkenness. 
 
 " Ye'd better see ye get fair play yerself before you talk 
 so grand about it ! " She pointed up at Francie. " Mrs. 
 Dysart indeed ! " she bowed with a sarcastic exaggeration, 
 that in saner moments she would not have been capable of 
 " Lady Dysart of Bruff, one of these days I suppose ! " 
 she bowed again. " That's what Miss Charlotte Mullen has 
 laid out for ye," addressing herself to Christopher, " and 
 ye'll not get away from that one till ye're under her foot ! " 
 
 She laughed again ; her face became vacant and yet full 
 of pain, and she staggered away down the avenue, talking 
 violently and gesticulating with her hands. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 MRS. LAMBERT gathered up her purse, her list, her bag, and 
 her parasol from the table in Miss Greely's wareroom, and 
 turned to give her final directions. 
 
 " Now, Miss Greely, before Sunday for certain ; and 
 you'll be careful about the set of the skirt, that it doesn't 
 firk up at the side, the way the black one did " 
 
 " We understand the set of a skirt, Mrs. Lambert," inter- 
 posed the elder Miss Greely in her most aristocratic voice ; 
 " I think you may leave that to us." 
 
 Mrs. Lambert retreated, feeling as snubbed as it was 
 
The Real Charlotte. 223 
 
 intended that she should feel, and with a last injunction to 
 the girl in the shop to be sure not to let the Rosemount 
 messenger leave town on Saturday night without the parcel 
 that he'd get from upstairs, she addressed herself to the 
 task of walking home. She was in very good spirits, and 
 the thought of a new dress for church next Sunday was 
 exhilarating; it was a pleasant fact also that Charlotte 
 Mullen was coming to tea, and she and Muffy, the Maltese 
 terrier, turned into Barrett's to buy a tea-cake m honour of 
 the event. Mrs. Beattie was also there, and the two ladies 
 and Mrs. Barrett had a most enjoyable discussion on tea ; 
 Mrs. Beattie advocating " the one and threepenny from the 
 Stores," while Mrs. Barrett and her other patroness agreed 
 in upholding the Lismoyle three-and-sixpenny against all 
 others. Mrs. Lambert set forth again with her tea-cake in 
 her hand, and with such a prosperous expression of coun- 
 tenance that Nance the Fool pursued her down the street 
 with a confidence that was not unrewarded. 
 
 " That the hob of heaven may be your scratching post ! " 
 she screamed, in the midst of one of her most effective fits 
 of coughing, as Mrs. Lambert's round little dolmaned figure 
 passed complacently onward, M that Pether and Paul may 
 wait on ye, and that the saints may be surprised at yer 
 success 1 She's sharitable, the craythur," she ended in a 
 lower voice, as she rejoined the rival and confederate who 
 had yielded to her the right of plundering the last passer-by, 
 " and sign's on it, it thrives with her ; she's got very gross ! ' 
 
 " Faith it wasn't crackin' blind nuts made her that fat," 
 said the confidante unamiably, " and with all her riches she 
 didn't give ye the price of a dhrink itself ! " 
 
 Mrs. Lambert entered her house by the kitchen, so as to 
 give directions to Eliza Hackett about the tea-cake, and 
 when she got upstairs she found Charlotte already awaiting 
 her in the dining-room, occupied in reading a pamphlet on 
 stall feeding, with apparently as complete a zest as if it had 
 been one of those yellow paper-covered volumes whose 
 appearance aroused such a respectful horror in Lismoyle. 
 
 " Well, Lucy, is this the way you receive your visitors ? " 
 she began jocularly, as she rose and kissed her hostess's 
 florid cheek ; " I needn't ask how you are, as you're 
 looking blooming." 
 
224 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 "I declare I think this hot summer suits me. I feel 
 stronger than I've done this good while back, thank God. 
 Roddy was saying this morning he'd have to put me and 
 Muffy on banting, we'd both put up so much flesh." 
 
 The turkey-hen looked so pleased as she recalled this 
 conjugal endearment that Charlotte could not resist the 
 pleasure of taking her down a peg or two. 
 
 " I think he's quite right," she said with a laugh ; " no- 
 thing ages ye like fat, and no man likes to see his wife 
 turning into an old woman." 
 
 Poor Mrs. Lambert took the snub meekly, as was her 
 wont. "Well, anyway, it's a comfort to feel a little stronger, 
 Charlotte; isn't it what they say, < laugh and grow fat.'" 
 She took off her dolman and rang the bell for tea. " Tell 
 me, Charlotte," she went on, " did you hear anything about 
 that poor Miss Duffy ? " 
 
 " I was up at the infirmary this morning asking the Sister 
 about her. It was Rattray himself found her lying on the 
 road, and brought her in ; he says it's inflammation of the 
 brain, and if she pulls through she'll not be good for any- 
 thing afterwards." 
 
 " Oh, my, my ! " said Mrs. Lambert sympathetically. 
 " And to think of her being at our gate lodge that very day ! 
 Mary Holloran said she had that dying look in her face you 
 couldn't mistake." 
 
 " And no wonder, when you think of the way she lived," 
 said Charlotte angrily ; " starving there in Gurthnamuckla 
 like a rat that'd rather die in his hole than come out of it." 
 
 " Well, she's out of it now, poor thing," ventured Mrs. 
 Lambert. 
 
 " She is ! and I think she'll stay out of it. She'll never 
 be right in her head again, and her things'll have to be sold 
 to support her and pay some one to look after her, and if 
 they don't fetch that much she'll have to go into the county 
 asylum. I wanted to talk to Roddy about that very thing," 
 went on Charlotte, irritation showing itself in her voice ; 
 "but I suppose he's going riding or boating or amusing 
 himself somehow, as usual." 
 
 " No, he's not ! " replied Mrs. Lambert, with just a shade 
 of triumph. " He's taken a long walk by himself. He 
 thought perhaps he'd better look after his figure as well as 
 
The Real Charlotte. 225 
 
 me and Muffy, and he wanted to see a horse he's thinking 
 of buying. He says he'd like to be able to leave me the 
 mare to draw me in the phaeton." 
 
 "Where will he get the money to buy it?" asked 
 Charlotte sharply. 
 
 " Oh ! I leave all the money matters to him," said Mrs. 
 Lambert, with that expression of serene satisfaction in her 
 husband that had already had a malign effect on Miss 
 Mullen's temper. " I know I can trust him." 
 
 '* You've a very different story to-day to what you had the 
 last time I was here," said Charlotte with a sneer. " Are 
 all your doubts of him composed ? " 
 
 The entrance of the tea-tray precluded all possibility of 
 answer ; but Charlotte knew that her javelin was quivering 
 in the wound. The moment the door closed behind the 
 servant, Mrs. Lambert turned upon her assailant with the 
 whimper in her voice that Charlotte knew so well. 
 
 " I greatly regretted, Charlotte," she said, with as much 
 dignity as she could muster, " speaking to you the way I 
 did, for I believe now I was totally mistaken." 
 
 It might be imagined that Charlotte would have taken 
 pleasure in Mrs. Lambert's security, inasmuch as it implied 
 her own ; but, so far from this being the case, it was intoler- 
 able to her that her friend should be blind to the fact that 
 tortured her night and day. 
 
 " And what's changed your mind, might I ask ? " 
 
 " His conduct has changed my mind, Charlotte," replied 
 Mrs. Lambert severely ; " and that's enough for me." 
 
 "Well, I'm glad you're pleased with his conduct, Lucy; 
 but if he was my husband I'd find out what he was doing at 
 Tally Ho every day in the week before I was so rejoiced 
 about him." 
 
 Charlotte's face had flushed in the heat of argument, and 
 Mrs. Lambert felt secretly a little frightened. 
 
 " Begging your pardon, Charlotte," she said, still striving 
 after dignity, " he's not there every day, and when he does 
 go it's to talk business with you he goes, about Gurthna- 
 muckla and money and things like that." 
 
 Charlotte sat up with a dangerous look about her jaw 
 She could hardly believe that Lambert could have babbled 
 her secrets to this despised creature in order to save himself. 
 
 p 
 
226 The Real Charlotte, 
 
 " He appears to tell you a good deal about his business 
 affairs," she said, her eyes quelling the feeble resistance in 
 Mrs. Lambert's ; " but he doesn't seem to tell you the truth 
 about other matters. He's telling ye lies about what takes 
 him to Tally Ho ; it isn't to talk business " the colour 
 deepened in her face. " I tell ye once for all, that as sure 
 as God's in heaven he's fascinated with that girl ! This isn't 
 the beginning of it ye needn't think it ! She flirted with 
 him in Dublin, and though she doesn't care two snaps of 
 her fingers for him she's flirting with him now ! " 
 
 The real Charlotte had seldom been nearer the surface 
 than at this moment ; and Mrs. Lambert cowered before the 
 manifestation. 
 
 " You're very unkind to me, Charlotte," she said in a voice 
 that was tremulous with fright and anger ; " I wonder at 
 you, that you would say such things to me about my own 
 husband." 
 
 " Well, perhaps you'd rather I said it to you now in con- 
 fidence than that every soul in Lismoyle should be prating 
 and talking about it, as they will be if ye don't put down 
 yer foot, and tell Roddy he's making a fool of himself ! " 
 
 Mrs. Lambert remained stunned for a few seconds at the 
 bare idea of putting down her foot where Roderick was con- 
 cerned, or of even insinuating that that supreme being could 
 make a fool of himself, and then her eyes filled with tears 
 of mortification. 
 
 " He is not making a fool of himself, Charlotte," she said, 
 endeavouring to pluck up spirit, "and you've no right to say 
 anything of the kind. You might have more respect for 
 your family than to be trying to raise scandal this way and 
 upsetting me, and I not able for it ! " 
 
 Charlotte looked at her, and kept back with an effort the 
 torrent of bullying fury that was seething in her. She had 
 no objection to upsetting Mrs. Lambert, but she preferred 
 that hysterics should be deferred until she had established 
 her point. Why she wished to establish it she did not ex- 
 plain to herself, but her restless jealousy, combined with her 
 intolerance of the Fool's Paradise in which Mrs. Lambert 
 had entrenched herself, made it impossible for her to leave 
 the subject alone. 
 
 " I think ye know it's not my habit to raise scandal, Lucy, 
 
The Real Charlotte. 227 
 
 and I'm not one to make an assertion without adequate 
 grounds for it," she said in her strong, acrid voice ; " as I 
 said before, this flirtation is an old story. I have my own 
 reasons for knowing that there was more going on than any- 
 one suspected, from the time she was in short frocks till she 
 came down here, and now, if she hadn't another affair on 
 hand, she'd have the whole country in a blaze about it. 
 Why, d'ye know that habit she wears ? It was your hus- 
 band paid for that ! " 
 
 She emphasised each word between her closed teeth, and 
 her large face was so close to Mrs. Lambert's, by the time 
 she had finished speaking, that the latter shrank back. 
 
 " I don't believe you, Charlotte," she said with trembling 
 lips ; " how do you know it ? " 
 
 Charlotte had no intention of telling that her source of in- 
 formation had been the contents of a writing-case of Francie's, 
 an absurd receptacle for photographs and letters that bore 
 the word " Papeterie " on its greasy covers, and had a lock 
 bearing a family resemblance to the lock of Miss Mullen's 
 work-box. But a cross-examination by the turkey-hen was 
 easily evaded. 
 
 "Never you mind how I know it. It's true." Then, with 
 a connection of ideas that she would have taken more pains 
 to conceal in dealing with anyone else, " Did ye ever see 
 any of theietters she wrote to him when she was in Dublin?" 
 
 " No, Charlotte ; I'm not in the habit of looking at my 
 husband's letters. I think the tea is drawn," she continued, 
 making a last struggle to maintain her position, " and I'd 
 b glad to hear no more on the subject." She took the 
 cosy off the tea-pot, and began to pour out the tea, but her 
 hands were shaking, and Charlotte's eye made her nervous. 
 " Oh, I'm very tired I'm too long without my tea. Oh, 
 Charlotte, why do you annoy me this way when you know 
 it's so bad for me?" She put-down the tea-pot, and 
 covered her face with her hands. "Is it me own dear 
 husband that you say such things of? Oh, it couldn't be 
 true, and he always so kind to me ; indeed, it isn't true, 
 Charlotte," she protested piteously between her sobs. 
 
 " Me dear Lucy," said Charlotte, laying her broad hand 
 on Mrs. Lambert's knee, " I wish I could say it wasn't, 
 though of course the wisest of us is liable to error. Come 
 
228 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 i 
 
 now ! " she said, as if struck by a new idea. " I'll tell ye 
 how we could settle the matter ! It's a way you won't like, 
 and it's a way I don't like either, but I solemnly think you 
 owe it to yourself, and to your position as a wife. Will you 
 let me say it to you ? " 
 
 " Oh, you may, Charlotte, you may," said Mrs. Lambert 
 tearfully. 
 
 " Well, my advice to you is this, to see what old letters 
 of hers he has, and ye'll be able to judge for yourself what 
 the truth of the case is. If there's no harm in them I'll be 
 only too ready to congratulate ye on proving me in the 
 wrong, and if there is, why, ye'll know what course to 
 pursue." 
 
 "Is it look at Roddy's letters?" cried Mrs. Lambert, 
 emerging from her handkerchief with a stare of horror ; 
 " he'd kill me if he thought I looked at them ! " 
 
 " Ah, nonsense, woman, he'll never know you looked at 
 them," said Charlotte, scanning the room quickly ; * is it in 
 his study he keeps his private letters ? " 
 
 " No, I think it's in his old despatch-box up on the shelf 
 there," answered Mrs. Lambert, a little taken with the idea, 
 in spite of her scruples. 
 
 "Then ye're done," said Charlotte, looking up at the 
 despatch-box in its absolute security of Bramah lock ; " of, 
 course he has his keys with him always." 
 
 " Well then, d'ye know," said Mrs. Lambert hesitatingly 
 " I think I heard his keys jingling in the pocket of the coa t 
 he took off before he went out, and I didn't notice him tak- 
 ing them out of it but, oh, my dear, I wouldn't dare to open 
 any of his things. I might as well quit the house if he 
 found it out." 
 
 " I tell you it's your privilege as a wife, and your plain 
 duty besides, to see those letters," urged Charlotte. "I'd re- 
 commend you to go up and get those keys now, this minute ; 
 it's like the hand of Providence that he should leave them 
 behind him." 
 
 The force of her will had its effect. Mrs. Lambert got 
 up, and, after another declaration that Roderick would kill 
 her, went out of the room and up the stairs at a pace that 
 Charlotte did not think her capable of. She heard her step 
 hurrying into the room overhead, and in a surprisingly short 
 
The Real Ckarlott*. 229 
 
 time she was back again, uttering pants of exhaustion and 
 alarm, but holding the keys in her hand. 
 
 " Oh," she said, " I thought every minute I heard him 
 coming to the door ! Here they are for you, Charlotte, take 
 them ! I'll not have anything more to say to them." 
 
 She flung the keys into Miss Mullen's lap, and prepared 
 to sink into her chair again. Charlotte jumped up, and the 
 keys rattled on to the floor. 
 
 " And d'ye think I'd lay a finger on them ? " she said, in 
 such a voice that Mrs. Lambert checked herself in the 
 action of sitting down, and Muffy fled under his mistress's 
 chair and barked in angry alarm. " Pick them up yourself ! 
 It's no affair of mine ! " She pointed with a fateful finger at 
 the keys, and Mrs. Lambert obediently stooped for them. 
 " Now, there's the desk, ye'd better not lose any more time, 
 but get it down." 
 
 The shelf on which the desk stood was the highest one of 
 a small book-case, and was just above the level of Mrs. 
 Lambert's head, so that when, after many a frightened look 
 out of the window, she stretched up her short arms to take 
 it down, she found the task almost beyond her. 
 
 " Come and help me, Charlotte," she cried ; "I'm afraid 
 it'll fall on me ! " 
 
 " I'll not put a hand to it," said Charlotte, without moving, 
 while her ugly, mobile face twitched with excitement ; " it's 
 you have the right and no one else, and I'd recommend ye 
 to hurry ! " 
 
 The word hurry acted electrically on Mrs. Lambert ; she 
 put forth all her feeble strength, and lifting the heavy de- 
 spatch-box from the shelfi she staggered with it to the 
 dinner-table. 
 
 " Oh, it's the weight of the house 1 M she gasped, collap- 
 sing on to a chair beside it. 
 
 " Here, open it now quickly, and we'll talk about the 
 weight of it afterwards" said Charlotte so imperiously that 
 Mrs. Lambert, moved by a power that was scarcely her own, 
 fumbled through the bunch for the key. 
 
 "There it is! Don't you see the Bramah key?" ex- 
 claimed Charlotte, hardly repressing the inclination to call 
 her friend a fool and to snatch the bunch from her ; " press 
 it in hard now, or ye'll not get it to turn," 
 
230 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 If the lock had not been an easy one, it is probable that 
 Mrs. Lambert's helpless fingers would never have turned the 
 key, but it yielded to the first touch, and she lifted the lid. 
 Charlotte craned over her shoulder with eyes that ravened 
 on the contents of the box. 
 
 " No, there's nothing there," she said, taking in with one 
 look the papers that lay in the tray ; " lift up the tray ! " 
 
 Mrs. Lambert, now past remonstrance, did as she was 
 bid, and some bundles of letters and a few photographs were 
 brought to light. 
 
 " Show the photographs 1 " said Charlotte in one fierce 
 breath. 
 
 But here Mrs. Lambert's courage failed. " Oh, I can't, 
 don't ask me ! " she wailed, clasping her hands on her 
 bosom, with a terror of some irrevocable truth that might 
 await her adding itself to the fear of discovery. 
 
 Charlotte caught one of her hands, and, with a guttural 
 sound of contempt, forced it down on to the photograph. 
 
 "Show it to me !" 
 
 Her victim took up the photographs, and turning them 
 round, revealed two old pictures of Lambert in riding 
 clothes, with Francie beside him in a very badly made habit, 
 with her hair down her back. 
 
 " What d'ye think of that ? " said Charlotte. She was 
 gripping Mrs. Lambert's sloping shoulder, and her breath 
 was coming hard and short. "Now, get out her letters. 
 There they are in the corner ! " 
 
 "Ah, she's only a child in that picture," said Mrs. 
 Lambert in a tone of relief, as she hurriedly put the photo- 
 graphs back. 
 
 " Open the letters and ye'll see what sort of a child she 
 was." 
 
 Mrs. Lambert made no further demur. She took out the 
 bundle that Charlotte pointed to, and drew the top one from 
 its retaining india-rubber strap. Even in affairs of the heart 
 Mr. Lambert was a tidy man. 
 
 " My dear Mr. Lambert," she read aloud, in a deprecating, 
 tearful voice that was more than ever like the quivering 
 chirrup of a turkey-hen, " the cake was scrumptious, all the 
 girls were after me for a bit of it, and asking where I got it, 
 hut I wouldn't tell. I put it under my pillow three nights. 
 
The Real Charlotte. 231 
 
 but all I dreamt of was Uncle Robert walking round and 
 round Stephen's Green in his night-cap. You must have 
 had a grand wedding. Why didn't you ask me there to 
 dance at it ? So now no more from your affectionate friend, 
 F. Fitzpatrick." 
 
 Mrs. Lambert leaned back, and her hands fell into her 
 lap. 
 
 " Well, thank God there's no harm in that, Charlotte," 
 she said, closing her eyes with a sigh that might have been 
 relief, though her voice sounded a little dreamy and be- 
 wildered. 
 
 " Ah, you began at the wrong end," said Charlotte, little 
 attentive to either sigh or tone, " that was written five years 
 ago. Here, what's in this ? " She indicated the one lowest 
 in the packet. 
 
 Mrs. Lambert opened her eyes. 
 
 " The drops ! " she said with sudden energy, " on the 
 sideboard oh, save me ! " 
 
 Her voice fainted away, her eyes closed, and her head fell 
 limply on to her shoulder. Charlotte sprang instinctively 
 towards the sideboard, but suddenly stopped and looked 
 from Mrs. Lambert to the bundle of letters. She caught it 
 up, and plucking out a couple of the most recent, read them 
 through with astonishing speed. She was going to take out 
 another when a slight movement from her companion made 
 her throw them down. 
 
 Mrs. Lambert was slipping off the high dining-room chair 
 on which she was sitting, and there was a look about her 
 mouth that Charlotte had never seen there before. Char- 
 lotte had her arm under her in a moment, and, letting her 
 slip quietly down, laid her flat on the floor. Through the 
 keen and crowding contingencies of the moment came a 
 sound from outside, a well-known voice calling and whistling 
 to a dog, and in the same instant Charlotte had left Mrs. 
 Lambert and was deftly and swiftly replacing letters and 
 photographs in the despatch-box. She closed the lid noise- 
 lessly, put it back on its shelf with scarcely an effort, and 
 after a moment of uncertainty, slipped the keys into Mrs. 
 Lambert's pocket. She knew that Lambert would never 
 guess at his wife's one breach of faith. Then, with a 
 quickness almost incredible in a woman of her build, she 
 
232 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 got the drops from the sideboard, poured them out, and, on 
 her way back to the inert figure on the floor, rang the bell 
 violently. Muffy had crept from under the table to snuff 
 with uncanny curiosity at his mistress's livid face, and as 
 Charlotte approached, he put his tail between his legs and 
 yapped shrilly at her. 
 
 " Get out, ye damned cur ! " she exclaimed, the coarse, 
 superstitious side of her nature coming uppermost now that 
 the absorbing stress of those acts of self-preservation was 
 over. Her big foot lifted the dog and sent him flying across 
 the room, and she dropped on her knees beside the motion- 
 less, tumbled figure on the floor. " She's dead ! she's 
 dead ! " she cried out, and as if in protest against her own 
 words she flung water upon the unresisting face, and tried 
 to force the drops between the closed teeth. But the face 
 never altered ; it only acquired momentarily the immovable 
 preoccupation of death, that asserted itself in silence, and 
 gave the feeble features a supreme dignity, in spite of the 
 thin dabbled fringe and the gold ear-rings and brooch, that 
 were instinct with the vulgarities of life. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 / 
 
 FEW possessed of any degree of imagination can turn their 
 backs on a churchyard, after having witnessed there the 
 shovelling upon and stamping down of the last poor refuge 
 of that which all feel to be superfluous, a mere fragment of 
 the inevitable dibris of life, without a clinging hope that in 
 some way or other the process may be avoided for them- 
 selves. In spite of philosophy, the body will not picture its 
 surrender to the sordid thraldom of the undertaker and the 
 mastery of the spade, and preferably sees itself falling 
 through cold miles of water to some vague resting-place 
 below the tides, or wedged beyond search in the grip of an 
 ice crack, or swept as grey ash into a cinerary urn ; anything 
 rather than the prisoning coffin and blind weight of earth. 
 So Christopher thought impatiently, as he drove back to 
 Bruff from Mrs. Lambert's funeral, in the dismal solemnity 
 of black clothes and a brougham, while the distant rattle of 
 a reaping-machine was like a voice full of the health and 
 
The Real Charlotte. 233 
 
 energy of life, that talked on of harvest, and would not hear 
 of graves, 
 
 That the commonplace gloom of a funeral should have 
 plunged his general ideas into despondency is, however, too 
 much to believe of even such a supersensitive mind as 
 Christopher's. It gave a darker wash of colour to what was 
 already clouded, and probably it was its trite, terrific sneer 
 at human desire and human convention that deadened his 
 heart from time to time with fatalistic suggestion ; but it 
 was with lesser facts than these that he strove. Miss 
 Mullen depositing hysterically a wreath upon her friend's 
 coffin, in the acute moment of lowering it into the grave ; 
 Miss Mullen sitting hysterically beside him in the carriage 
 as he drove her back to Tally Ho in the eyes of all men ; 
 Miss Mullen lying, still hysterical, on her drawing-room sofa, 
 holding in her black-gloved hand a tumbler of sal volatile 
 and water, and eventually commanding her emotion suffi- 
 ciently to ask him to bring her, that afternoon, a few books 
 and papers, to quiet her nerves, and to rob of its weariness 
 the bad night that would inevitably be her portion. 
 
 It was opposite these views, which, as far as tears went, 
 might well be called dissolving, that his mind chiefly took 
 its stand, in unutterable repugnance, and faint endeavour to 
 be blind to his own convictions. He was being chased. 
 Now that he knew it he wondered how he could ever have 
 been unaware of it ; it was palpable to anyone, and he felt 
 in advance what it would be like to hear the exultant wind- 
 ing of the huntsman's horn, if the quarry were overtaken. 
 The position was intolerable from every rational point of 
 view ; Christopher with his lethargic scorn of social tyrannies 
 and stale maxims of class, could hardly have believed that 
 he was sensible of so many of these points, and despised 
 himself accordingly. Julia Duffy's hoarse voice still tor- 
 mented his ear in involuntary spasms of recollection, keep- 
 ing constantly before him the thought of the afternoon of 
 four days ago, when he and Francie had been informed of 
 the destiny allotted to them. The formless and unques- 
 tioned dream through which he had glided had then been 
 broken up, like some sleeping stretch of river when the jaws 
 of the dredger are dashed into it, and the mud is dragged 
 to light, and the soiled waves carry the outrage onward ir> 
 
234 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 ceaseless escape. Nothing now could place him where he 
 had been before, nor could he wish to regain that purpose- 
 less content. It was better to look things in the face at 
 last, and see where they were going to end. It was better 
 to know himself to be Charlotte's prize than to give up 
 Francie. 
 
 This was what it meant, he said to himself, while he 
 changed his funeral garb, and tried to get into step with the 
 interrupted march of the morning. The alternative had 
 been with him for four days, and now, while he wrote his 
 letters, and sat at luncheon, and collected the books that 
 were to interpose between Miss Mullen and her grief, the 
 choice became more despotic than ever, in spite of the 
 antagonism that met it in every surrounding. All the 
 chivalry that smouldered under the modern malady of 
 exhausted enthusiasm ranged itself on Francie's side; all 
 the poetry in which he had steeped his mind, all his own 
 poetic fancy, combined to blind him to many things that he 
 would otherwise have seen. He acquitted her of any share 
 in her cousin's coarse scheming with a passionateness that 
 in itself testified to the terror lest it might be true. He 
 had idealised her to the pitch that might have been ex- 
 pected, and clothed her with his own refinement, as with a 
 garment, so that it was her position that hurt him most, hei 
 embarrassment that shamed him beyond his own. 
 
 Christopher's character is easier to feel than to describe ; 
 so conscious of its own weakness as to be almost incapable 
 of confident effort, and with a soul so humble and straight- 
 forward that it did not know its own strength and simplicity. 
 Some dim understanding of him must have reached Francie, 
 with her ignorant sentimentalities and her Dublin brogue ; 
 and as a sea-weed stretches vague arms up towards the 
 light through the conflict of the tides, her pliant soul rose 
 through its inherited vulgarities, and gained some vision of 
 higher things. Christopher could not know how un- 
 paralleled a person he was in her existence, of how wholly 
 unknown a type. Hawkins and he had been stars of un- 
 imagined magnitude ; but though she had attained to the 
 former's sphere with scarcely an effort, Christopher re- 
 mained infinitely remote. She could scarcely have believed 
 that as he drove from Bruff in the quiet sunshine of the 
 
The Real Charlotte. 235 
 
 afternoon, and surmounted the hill near its gate, the magic 
 that she herself had newly learned about was working its 
 will with him. 
 
 The corn that had stood high between him and Francie 
 that day when he had ridden back to look after her, was 
 bound in sheaves on the yellow upland, and the foolish 
 omen set his pulses going. If she were now passing along 
 that other road there would be nothing between him and 
 her. He had got past the stage of reason, even his power 
 of mocking at himself was dead, or perhaps it was that there 
 seemed no longer anything that could be mocked at. In 
 spite of his knowledge of the world the position had an 
 aspect that was so serious and beautiful as to overpower the 
 others, and to become one of the mysteries of life into 
 which he had thought himself too cheap and shallow to 
 enter. A few weeks ago a visit to Tally Ho would have 
 been a penance and a weariness of the flesh, a thing to be 
 groaned over with Pamela, and endured only for the sake 
 of collecting some new pearl of rhetoric from Miss Mullen. 
 Now each thought of it brought again the enervating thrill, 
 the almost sickening feeling of subdued excitement and ex- 
 pectation. 
 
 It was the Lismoyle market-day, and Christopher made 
 his way slowly along the street, squeezing between carts 
 and barrels, separating groups locked together in the 
 extremity of bargaining, and doing what in him lay to avoid 
 running over the old women, who, blinded by their over- 
 hanging hoods and deaf by nature, paraded the centre of 
 the thoroughfare with a fine obliviousness of dog-carts and 
 their drivers. Most of the better class of shops had their 
 shutters up in recognition of the fact that Mrs. Lambert, a 
 customer whom neither co-operative stores or eighteen- 
 penny teas had been able to turn from her allegiance, had 
 this morning passed their doors for the last time, in slow, 
 incongruous pomp, her silver-mounted coffin commanding 
 all eyes as the glass-sided hearse moved along with its 
 quivering bunches of black plumes. The funeral was still 
 a succulent topic in the gabble of the market ; Christopher 
 heard here and there such snatches of it as : 
 
 " Rest her sowl, the crayture ! 'Tis she was the good 
 wife and more than all, she was the beautiful housekeeper!" 
 
236 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 " Is it he lonesome afther her ? No, nor if he berrid ten 
 like her." 
 
 " She was a spent little woman always, and 'tis she that 
 doted down on him." 
 
 "And ne'er a child left afther her ! Well, she must be 
 exshcused." 
 
 " Musha, I'd love her bones ! " shouted Nance the Fool, 
 well aware of the auditor in the dog-cart, " there wasn't one 
 like her in the nation, nor in the world, no, nor in the town 
 o' Galway ! " 
 
 Towards the end of the street, at the corner of a lane 
 leading to the quay, something like a fight was going on, 
 and, as he approached, Christopher saw, over the heads of 
 an admiring audience, the infuriated countenance of a 
 Lismoyle beggar-woman, one of the many who occasionally 
 legalised their existence by selling fish, between long bouts 
 of mendicancy and drunkenness. Mary Norris was ap- 
 parently giving what she would call the length and breadth 
 of her tongue to some customer who had cast doubts upon 
 the character of her fish, a customer who was for the 
 moment quiescent, and hidden behind the tall figure of her 
 adversary. 
 
 " Whoever says thim throuts isn't leppin' fresh out o' the 
 lake he's a dom liar, and it's little I think of tellin' it t'ye 
 up to yer nose ! There's not one in the counthry but knows 
 yer thricks and yer chat, and ye may go home out o' that, with 
 yer bag sthrapped round ye, and ye can take the tay-leaves 
 and the dhrippin' from the servants, and huxther thim to feed 
 yer cats, but thanks be to God ye'll take nothing out o' my 
 basket this day ! " 
 
 There was a titter of horrified delight from the crowd. 
 
 " Ye never spoke a truer word than that, Mary Norris," 
 replied a voice that sent a chill down Christopher's back \ 
 "when I come into Lismoyle, it's not to buy rotten fish from 
 a drunken fish-fag, that'll be begging for crusts at my hall- 
 door to-morrow. If I hear another word out of yer mouth 
 I'll give you and your fish to the police, and the streets'll be 
 rid of you and yer infernal tongue for a week, at all events, 
 and the prison'll have a treat that it's pretty well used to ! " 
 
 Another titter rewarded this sally, and Charlotte, well 
 pleased, turned to walk away. As she did so, she caught 
 
The Real Charlotte. 237 
 
 sight of Christopher, looking at her with an expression from 
 which he had not time to remove his emotions, and for a 
 moment she wished that the earth would open and swallow 
 her up. She reddened visibly, but recovered herself, and at 
 once made her way out into the street towards him. 
 
 " How are you again, Mr. Dysart ? You just came in 
 time to get a specimen of the res angusta domi? she said, 
 in a voice that contrasted almost ludicrously with her last 
 utterances. "People like David, who talk about the ad- 
 vantages of poverty, have probably never tried buying fish 
 in Lismoyle. It's always the way with these drunken old 
 hags. They repay your charity by impudence and bad 
 language, and one has to speak pretty strongly to them to 
 make one's meaning penetrate to their minds." 
 
 Her eyes were still red and swollen from her violent crying 
 at the funeral. But for them, Christopher could hardly 
 have believed that this was the same being whom he had 
 last seen on the sofa at Tally Ho, with the black gloves and 
 the sal volatile. 
 
 " Oh yes, of course," he said vaguely ; " everyone has to 
 undergo Mary Norris some time or other. If you are going 
 back to Tally Ho now, I can drive you there." 
 
 The invitation was lukewarm as it well could be, but had 
 it been the most fervent in the world Charlotte had no in- 
 tention of accepting it. 
 
 " No thank you, Mr. Dysart. I'm not done my market- 
 ing yet, but Francie's at home and she'll give you tea. Don't 
 wait for me. I've no appetite for anything to-day. I only 
 came out to get a mouthful of fresh air, in hopes it might 
 give me a better night, though, indeed, I've small chance of 
 it after what I've gone through." 
 
 Christopher drove on, and tried not to think of Miss 
 Mullen or of his mother or Pamela, while his too palpably 
 discreet hostess elbowed her way through the crowd in the 
 opposite direction. 
 
 Francie was sitting in the drawing-room awaiting her 
 visitor. She had been up very early making the wreath of 
 white asters that Charlotte had laid on Mrs. Lambert's 
 coffin, and had shed some tears over the making of it, for 
 the sake of the kindly little woman who had never been 
 anything but good to her. She had spent a trying morning 
 
238 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 in ministering to Charlotte ; after her early dinner she had 
 dusted the drawing-room, and refilled the vases in a manner 
 copied as nearly as possible from Pamela's arrangement of 
 flowers ; and she was now feeling as tired as might reason- 
 ably have been expected. About Christopher she felt 
 thoroughly disconcerted and out of conceit with herself. 
 It was strange that she, like him, should least consider her 
 own position when she thought about the things that Julia 
 Duffy had said to them ; her motive was very different, but 
 it touched the same point. It was the effect upon Christo- 
 pher that she ceaselessly pictured, that she longed to under- 
 stand : whether or not he believed what he had heard, and 
 whether, if he believed, he would ever be the same to her. 
 His desertion would have been much less surprising than 
 his allegiance, but she would have felt it very keenly, with 
 the same aching resignation with which we bear one of 
 nature's acts of violence. When she met him this morning 
 her embarrassment had taken the simple form of distance 
 and avoidance, and a feeling that she could never show him 
 plainly enough that she, at least, had no designs upon him ; 
 yet, through it all, she clung to the belief that he would not 
 change towards her. It was burning humiliation to see 
 Charlotte spread her nets in the sight of the bird, but it did 
 not prevent her from dressing herself as becomingly as she 
 could when the afternoon came, nor, so ample are the 
 domains of sentiment, did some nervous expectancy in the 
 spare minutes before Christopher arrived deter her from 
 taking out of her pocket a letter wrn by long sojourn there; 
 and reading it with delaying and softened eyes. 
 
 Her correspondence with Hawkins had been fraught with 
 difficulties ; in fact, it had been only by the aid of a judici- 
 ous shilling and an old pair of boots bestowed on Louisa, 
 that she had ensured to herself a first sight of the contents 
 of the post-bag, before it was conveyed, according to custom, 
 to Miss Mullen's bedroom. Somehow since Mr. Hawkins 
 had left Hythe and gone to Yorkshire the quantity and 
 quality of his letters had dwindled surprisingly. The three 
 thick weekly budgets of sanguine anticipation and profuse 
 endearments had languished into a sheet or two every ten 
 days of affectionate retrospect in which less and less refer- 
 ence was made to breaking off his engagement with Miss 
 
The Real Charlotte. 239 
 
 Coppard, that trifling and summary act which was his 
 ostensible mission in going to Misfianctts house; and this, 
 the last letter from him, had been merely a few lines of 
 excuse for not having written before, ending with regret that 
 his leave would be up in a fortnight, as he had had a rip- 
 ping time on old Coppard's moor, and the cubbing was just 
 beginning, a remark which puzzled Francie a good deal, 
 though its application was possibly clearer to her than the 
 writer had meant it to be. Inside the letter was a photo- 
 graph of himself, that had been done at Hythe, and was 
 transferred by Francie from letter to letter, in order that it 
 might never leave her personal keeping ; and, turning from 
 the barren trivialities over which she had been poring, 
 Francie fell to studying the cheerful, unintellectual face 
 therein portrayed above the trim glories of a mess jacket. 
 
 She was still looking at it when she heard the expected 
 wheels ; she stuffed the letter back into her pocket, then 
 remembering the photograph, pulled the letter out again 
 and put it into it. She was putting the letter away for the 
 second time when Christopher came in, and in her guilty 
 self-consciousness she felt that he must have noticed the 
 action. 
 
 " How did you get in so quickly ? " she said, with a con- 
 fusion that heightened the general effect of discovery. 
 
 " Donovan was there and took the trap," said Christopher, 
 " and the hall door was open, so I came in." 
 
 He sat down, and neither seemed certain for a moment 
 as to what to say next. 
 
 " I didn't really expect you to come, Mr. Dysart," began 
 Francie, the colour that the difficulty with the photograph 
 had given her ebbing slowly away ; " you have a right to 
 be tired as well as us, and Charlotte being upset that way 
 and all, made it awfully late before you got home, I'm 
 afraid." 
 
 " I met her a few minutes ago, and was glad to see that 
 she was all right again," said Christopher perfunctorily ; 
 " but certainly if I had been she, and had had any option 
 in the matter, I should have stayed at home this morning." 
 
 Both felt the awkwardness of discussing Miss Mullen, 
 but it seemed a shade less than the awkwardness of ignor- 
 ing her. 
 
240 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 " She was such a friend of poor Mrs. Lambert's," said 
 Francie ; " and I declare," she added, glad of even this 
 trivial chance of showing herself antagonistic to Charlotte, 
 " I think she delights in funerals." 
 
 " She has a peculiar way of showing her delight," replied 
 Christopher, with just enough ill-nature to make Francie 
 feel that her antagonism was understood and sympathised 
 with. 
 
 Francie gave an irrepressible laugh. " I don't think she 
 minds crying before people. I wish everyone minded cry- 
 ing as little as she does." 
 
 Christopher looked at her, and thought he saw something 
 about her eyes that told of tears. 
 
 " Do you mind crying ? " he said, lowering his voice 
 while more feeling escaped into his glance than he had 
 intended; "it doesn't seem natural that you should ever 
 cry." 
 
 "You're very inquisitive!" said Francie, the sparkle 
 coming back to her eye in a moment ; " why shouldn't I 
 cry if I choose ? " 
 
 " I should not like to think that you had anything to 
 make you cry." 
 
 She looked quickly at him to see if his face were as sin- 
 cere as his voice ; her perceptions were fine enough to 
 suggest that it would be typical of Christopher to show her 
 by a special deference and friendliness that he was sorry for 
 her, but now, as ever, she was unable to classify those deli- 
 cate shades of manner and meaning that might have told 
 her where his liking melted into love. She had been accus- 
 tomed to see men as trees walking, beings about whose 
 individuality of character she did not trouble herself ; 
 generally they made love to her, and, if they did not, she 
 presumed that they did not care about her, and gave them 
 no further attention. But this test did not seem satisfactory 
 in Christopher's case. 
 
 " I know what everyone thinks of me," she said, a heart 
 truth welling to the surface as she felt herself pitied and 
 comprehended ; " no one believes I ever have any trouble 
 about anything." 
 
 Christopher's heart throbbed. at the bitterness in a voice 
 that he had always known so wholly careless and undisturbed: 
 
The Real Charlotte. 241 
 
 it increased his pity for her a thousandfold, but it stirred 
 him with a strange and selfish pleasure to think that she had 
 suffered. Whatever it was that was in her mind, it had 
 given him a glimpse of that deeper part of her nature, so 
 passionately guessed at, so long unfindable. He did not 
 for an instant think of Hawkins, having explained away that 
 episode to himself some time before in the light of his new 
 reading of Francie's character ; it was Charlotte's face as she 
 confronted Mary Norris in the market that came to him, 
 and the thought of what it must be to be under her roof and 
 dependent on her. He saw now the full pain that Francie 
 bore in hearing herself proclaimed as the lure by which he 
 was to be captured, and that he should have brought her 
 thus low roused a tenderness in him that would not be gain- 
 said. 
 
 " /don't think it," he said, stammering ; " you might be- 
 lieve that I think more about you than other people do. I 
 know you feel things more than you let anyone see, and 
 that makes it all the worse for anyone who who is sorry 
 for you, and wants to tell you so " 
 
 This halting statement, so remarkably different in diction 
 from the leisurely sentences in which Christopher usually 
 expressed himself, did not tend to put Francie more at her 
 ease. She reddened slowly and painfully as his short- 
 sighted, grey eyes rested upon her. Hawkins filled so 
 prominent a place in her mind that Christopher's ambiguous 
 allusions seemed to be directed absolutely at him, and her 
 hand instinctively slipped into her pocket and clasped the 
 letter that was there, as if in that way she could hold her 
 secret fast. 
 
 " Ah, well," she tried to say it lightly " I don't want so 
 very much pity yet awhile ; when I do, I'll ask you 
 for it!" 
 
 She disarmed the words of her flippancy by the look with 
 which she lifted her dark-lashed eyes to him, and Christo- 
 pher's last shred of common sense sank in their tender 
 depths and was lost there. 
 
 " Is that true ? " he said, without taking his eyes from her 
 face. " Do you really trust me? would you promise always 
 to trust me?" 
 
 "Yes, I'm sure I'd always trust you," answered Francie, 
 
 Q 
 
242 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 beginning in some inexplicable way to feel frightened ; " I 
 think you're awfully kind." 
 
 " No, I am not kind," he said, turning suddenly very 
 white, and feeling his blood beating down to his finger-tips ; 
 " you must not say that when you know it's " Something 
 seemed to catch in his throat and take his voice away. " It 
 gives me the greatest pleasure to do anything for you," he 
 ended lamely. 
 
 The clear crimson deepened in Francie's cheeks. She 
 knew in one startling instant what Christopher meant, and 
 her fingers twined and untwined themselves in the crochet 
 sofa-cover as she sat, not daring to look at him, and not 
 knowing in the least what to say. 
 
 " How can I be kind to you ? " went on Christopher, his 
 vacillation swept away by the look in her downcast face that 
 told him she understood him ; " it's just the other way, it's 
 you who are kind to me. If you only knew what happiness 
 it is to me to to be with you to do anything on earth 
 for you you know what I mean I see you know what I 
 mean." 
 
 A vision rose up before Francie of her past self, loitering 
 about the Dublin streets, and another of an incredible and 
 yet possible future self, dwelling at Bruff in purple and fine 
 linen, and then she looked up and met Christopher's eyes. 
 She saw the look of tortured uncertainty and avowed pur- 
 pose that there was no mistaking; Bruff and its glories 
 melted away before it, and in their stead came Hawkins 1 
 laughing face, his voice, his touch, his kiss, in overpower- 
 ing contrast to the face opposite to her, with its uncompre- 
 hended intellect and refinement, and its pale anxiety. 
 
 " Don't say things like that to me, Mr. Dysart," she said 
 tremulously ; " I know how good you are to me, twice, twice 
 too good, and if I was in trouble, you'd be the first I'd come 
 to. But I'm all right," with an attempted gaiety and uncon- 
 cern that went near bringing the tears to her eyes ; " I can 
 paddle my own canoe for a while yet ! " 
 
 Her instinct told her that Christopher would be quicker 
 than most men to understand that she was putting up a line 
 of defence, and to respect it ; and with the unfailing recoil 
 of her mind upon Hawkins, she thought how little such a 
 method would have prevailed with him. 
 
The Real Charlotte. 243 
 
 " Then you don't want me ? " said Christopher, almost in 
 a whisper. 
 
 " Why should I want you or anybody?" she answered, 
 determined to misunderstand him, and to be like her usual 
 self in spite of the distress and excitement that she felt; 
 " I'm well able to look after myself, though you mightn't 
 think it, and I don't want anything this minute, only my tea, 
 and Norry's as cross as the cats, and I know she won't have 
 the cake made ! " She tried to laugh, but the laugh 
 faltered away into tears. She turned her head aside, and 
 putting one hand to her eyes, felt with the other in her 
 pocket for her handkerchief. It was underneath Hawkins' 
 letter, and as she snatched it out, it carried the letter along 
 with it. 
 
 Christopher had started up, unable to bear the sight of 
 her tears, and as he stood there, hesitating on the verge of 
 catching her in his arms, he saw the envelope slip down on 
 to the floor. As it fell the photograph slid out of its worn 
 covering, and lay face uppermost at his feet. He picked it 
 up, and having placed it with the letter on the sofa beside 
 Francie, he walked to the window and looked sightlessly out 
 into the garden. A heavily-laden tray bumped against the 
 door, the handle turned, and Louisa, having pushed the 
 door open with her knee, staggered in with the tea-tray. 
 She had placed it on the table and was back again in the 
 kitchen, talking over the situation with Bid Sal, before 
 Christopher spoke. 
 
 " I'm afraid I can't stay any longer," he said, in a voice 
 that was at once quieter and rougher than its wont \ " you 
 must forgive me if anything that I said has has hurt you 
 I didn't mean it to hurt you." He stopped short and 
 walked towards the door. As he opened it, he looked back 
 at her for an instant, but he did not speak again. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 THE kitchen at Tally Ho generally looked its best at ten 
 o'clock in the morning. Its best is, in this case, a relative 
 term, implying the temporary concealment of the plates, 
 loaves of bread, dirty rubbers, and jam-pots full of congealed 
 
244 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 dripping that usually adorned the tables, and the sweeping 
 of out-lying potato-skins and cinders into a chasm beneath 
 the disused hothearth. When these things had been done, 
 and Bid Sal and her bare feet had been effaced into some 
 outer purlieu, Norry felt that she was ready to receive the 
 Queen of England if necessary, and awaited the ordering 
 of dinner with her dress let down to its full length, a 
 passably clean apron, and an expression of severe and ex- 
 alted resignation. On the morning now in question 
 Charlotte was standing in her usual position, with her back 
 to the fire and her hands spread behind her to the warmth, 
 scanning with a general's eye the routed remnants of yester- 
 day's dinner, and debating with herself as to the banner 
 under which they should next be rallied. 
 
 "A curry, I think, Norry," she called out; "plenty of 
 onions and apples in it, and that's all ye want." 
 
 " Oh, musha ! God knows ye have her sickened with 
 yer curries," replied Norry's voice from the larder, " 'twas 
 ere yestherday ye had the remains of th' Irish stew in curry, 
 an' she didn't ate wharM blind your eye of it. Wasn't 
 Louisa tellin' me ! " 
 
 "And so I'm to order me dinners to please Miss 
 Francie ! " said Charlotte, in tones of surprising toleration ; 
 " well, ye can make a haricot of it if ye like. Perhaps her 
 ladyship will eat that." 
 
 " Faith 'tis aiqual to me what she ates " Here came a 
 clatter of crockery, and a cat shot like a comet from the 
 larder door, followed by Norry's foot and Norry's blasphemy 
 " or if she never ate another bit. And where's the carrots 
 to make a haricot ? Bid Sal's afther tellin' me there's ne'er 
 a one in the garden ; but sure, if ye sent Bid Sal to look for 
 salt wather in the say she wouldn't find it ! * 
 
 Miss Mullen laughed approvingly. " There's carrots in 
 plenty; and see here, Norry, you might give her a jam 
 dumpling use the gooseberry jam that's going bad. I've 
 noticed meself that the child isn't eating, and it won't do to 
 have the people saying we're starving her." 
 
 " Whoever'll say that, he wasn't looking at me yestherday, 
 and I makin' the cake for herself and Misther Dysart ! 
 Eight eggs, an* a cupful of sugar and a cupful of butther, 
 and God knows what more went in it, an' the half of me 
 
The Real Charlotte. 245 
 
 day gone bating it, and afther all they left it afther 
 thim ! " 
 
 " And whose fault was that but your own for not sending 
 it up in time ? " rejoined Charlotte, her voice sharpening at 
 once to vociferative argument ; " Miss Francie told me that 
 Mr. Dysart was forced to go without his tea." 
 
 " Late or early I'm thinkin' thim didn't ax it nor want it," 
 replied Norry, issuing from the larder with a basketful of 
 crumpled linen in her arms, and a visage of the utmost 
 sourness ; " there's your clothes for ye now, that was waitin' 
 on me yestherday to iron them, in place of makin' cakes." 
 
 She got a bowl of water and began to sprinkle the clothes 
 and roll them up tightly, preparatory to ironing them, her 
 ill-temper imparting to the process the air of whipping a 
 legion of children and putting them to bed. Charlotte 
 came over to the table, and, resting her hands on it, watched 
 Norry for a few seconds in silence. 
 
 " What makes you say they didn't want anything to eat?" 
 she asked ; " was Miss Francie ill, or was anything the 
 matter with her ? " 
 
 " How do I know what ailed her ? " replied Norry, 
 pounding a pillow-case with her fist before putting it away ; 
 " I have somethin' to do besides followin' her or mindin' her." 
 
 " Then what are ye talking about ? " 
 
 " Ye'd betther ax thim that knows. 'Twas Louisa seen 
 her within in the dhrawn'-room, an' whatever was on her 
 she was cryin' ; but, sure, Louisa tells lies as fast as a pig'd 
 gallop." 
 
 " What did she say ? " Charlotte darted the question at 
 Norry as a dog snaps at a piece of meat. 
 
 " Then she said plinty, an' 'tis she that's able. If ye told 
 that one a thing and locked the doore on her the way she 
 couldn't tell it agin, she'd bawl it up the chimbley." 
 
 " Where's Louisa ? " interrupted Charlotte impatiently. 
 
 " Meself can tell ye as good as Louisa," said Norry 
 instantly taking offence ; " she landed into the dhrawn'-room 
 with the tay, and there was Miss Francie sittin' on the sofa 
 and her handkerchief in her eyes, and Misther Dysart be- 
 yond in the windy and not a word nor a stir out of him, 
 only with his eyes shtuck out in the garden, an* she cryin' 
 always." 
 
246 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 " Psha ! Louisa's a fool 1 How does she know Miss 
 Francie was crying ? I'll bet a shilling 'twas only blowing 
 her nose she was." 
 
 Norry had by this time spread a ragged blanket on the 
 table, and, snatching up the tongs, she picked out of the 
 heart of the fire a red-hot heater and thrust it into a box- 
 iron with unnecessary violence. 
 
 " An' why wouldn't she cry ? Wasn't I listenin' to her 
 cryin' in her room lasht night an' I goin' up to bed?" 
 She banged the iron down on the table and began to rub it 
 to and fro on the blanket. " But what use is it to cry, even 
 if ye dhragged the hair out of yer head ? Ye might as well 
 be singin' and dancin'." 
 
 She flung up her head, and stared across the kitchen 
 under the wisps of hair that hung over her unseeing eyes 
 with such an expression as Deborah the Prophetess might 
 have worn. Charlotte gave a grunt of contempt, and pick- 
 ing Susan up from the bar of the table, she put him on her 
 shoulder and walked out of the kitchen. 
 
 Francie had been since breakfast sitting by the window 
 of the dining-room, engaged in the cheerless task of darning 
 a stocking on a soda-water bottle. Mending stockings was 
 not an art that she excelled in ; she could trim a hat or cut 
 out a dress, but the dark, unremunerative toil of mending 
 stockings was as distasteful to her as stone-breaking to a 
 tramp, and the simile might easily be carried out by com- 
 paring the results of the process to macadamising. It was 
 a still, foggy morning ; the boughs of the scarlet-blossomed 
 fuchsia were greyed with moisture, and shining drops 
 studded the sash of the open window like sea-anemones. 
 It was a day that was both close and chilly, and intolerable 
 as the atmosphere of the Tally Ho dining-room would have 
 been with the window shut, the breakfast things still on the 
 table, and the all-pervading aroma of cats, the damp, lifeless 
 air seemed only a shade better to Francie as she raised her 
 tired eyes from time to time and looked out upon the dis- 
 couraging prospect. Everything stood in the same trance 
 of stillness in which it had been when she had got up at 
 five o'clock and looked out at the sluggish dawn broadening 
 in blank silence upon the fields. She had leaned out of 
 her window till she had become cold through and through, 
 
The Real Charlotte. 247 
 
 and after that had unlocked her trunk, taken out Hawkins' 
 letters, and going back to bed had read and re-read them 
 there. The old glamour was about them ; the convincing 
 sincerity and assurance that was as certain of her devotion 
 as of his own, and the unfettered lavishness of expression 
 that made her turn hot and cold as she read them. She 
 had time to go through many phases of feeling before the 
 chapel-bell began to ring for eight o'clock Mass, and she 
 stole down to the kitchen to see if the post had come in. 
 The letters were lying on the table; three or four for 
 Charlotte, the local paper, a circular about peat litter 
 addressed to the Stud-groom, Tally Ho, and, underneath 
 all, the thick, rough envelope with the ugly boyish writing 
 that had hardly changed since Mr. Hawkins had written his 
 first letters home from Cheltenham College. Francie 
 caught it up, and was back in her own room in the twink- 
 ling of an eye. It contained only a few words. 
 
 " Dearest Francie, only time for a line to-day to say that 
 I am staying on here for another week, but I hope ten days 
 will see me back at the old mill. I want you like a good 
 girl to keep things as dark as possible. I don't see my way 
 out of this game yet. No more to-day. Just off to play 
 golf; the girls here are nailers at it. Thine ever, Gerald." 
 
 This was the ration that had been served out to her 
 hungry heart, the word that she had wearied for for a week; 
 that once more he had contrived to postpone his return, 
 and that the promise he had made to her under the tree in 
 the garden was as far from being fulfilled as ever. Chris- 
 topher Dysart would not have treated her this way, she 
 thought to herself, as she stooped over her darning and bit 
 her lip to keep it from quivering, but then she would not 
 have minded much whether he wrote to her or not 
 that was the worst of it. Francie had always confidently 
 announced to her Dublin circle of friends her intention 
 of marrying a rich man, good-looking, and a lord if possible, 
 but certainly rich. But here she was, on the morning after 
 what had been a proposal, or what had amounted to one, 
 from a rich young man who was also nice-looking, and 
 almost the next thing to a lord, and instead of sitting down 
 triumphantly to write the letter that should thrill the North 
 Side down to its very grocers' shops, she was darning stock- 
 
248 the Real Charlotte. 
 
 ings, red-eyed and dejected, and pondering over how best 
 to keep from her cousin any glimmering of what had 
 happened. All her old self posed and struck attitudes 
 before the well-imagined mirror of her friends' minds, and 
 the vanity that was flattered by success cried out petulantly 
 against the newer soul that enforced silence upon it. She 
 felt quite impartially how unfortunate it was that she should 
 have given her heart to Gerald in this irrecoverable way, 
 and then with a headlong change of ideas she said to her- 
 self that there was no one like him, and she would always, 
 always care for him, and nobody else. 
 
 This point having been emphasised by a tug at her 
 needle that snapped the darning cotton, Miss Fitzpatrick 
 was embarking upon a more pleasurable train of possi- 
 bilities when she heard Charlotte's foot in the hall, and fell 
 all of a sudden down to the level of the present. Charlotte 
 came in and .shut the door with her usual decisive slam ; 
 she went over to the sideboard and locked up the sugar 
 and jam with a sharp glance to see if Louisa had tampered 
 with either, and then sat down at her davenport near 
 Francie and began to look over her account books. 
 
 " Well, I declare," she said after a minute or two, " it's a 
 funny thing that I have to buy eggs, with my yard full ot 
 hens ! This is a state of things unheard of till you came 
 into the house, my young lady 1 " 
 
 Francie looked up and saw that this was meant as a 
 pleasantry. 
 
 " Is it me ? I wouldn't touch an egg to save my life ! " 
 
 " Maybe you wouldn't," replied Charlotte with the same 
 excessive jocularity, "but you can give tea-parties, and 
 treat your friends to sponge-cakes that are made with 
 nothing but eggs ! " 
 
 Francie scented danger in the air, and having laughed 
 nervously to show appreciation of the jest, tried to change 
 the conversation. 
 
 " How do you feel to-day, Charlotte ? " she asked, work- 
 ing away at her stocking with righteous industry ; " is your 
 headache gone ? I forgot to ask after it at breakfast" 
 
 "Headache? I'd forgotten I'd ever had one. Three 
 tabloids of antipyrin and a good night's rest ; that was all / 
 wanted to put me on my pegs again. But if it comes to 
 
The Real Charlotte. 249 
 
 that, me dear child, I'd trouble you to tell me what makes 
 you the colour of blay calico last night and this morning ? 
 It certainly wasn't all the cake you had at afternoon tea. I 
 declare I was quite vexed when I saw that lovely cake in 
 the larder, and not a bit gone from it." 
 
 Francie coloured. " I was up very early yesterday mak- 
 ing that cross, and I daresay that tired me. Tell me, did 
 Mr. Lambert say anything about it ? Did he like it ? " 
 
 Charlotte looked at her, but could discern no special ex- 
 pression in the piquant profile that was silhouetted against 
 the light. 
 
 " He had other things to think of besides your wreath," 
 she said coarsely; "when a man's wife isn't cold in her 
 coffin, he has something to think of besides young ladies' 
 wreaths ! " 
 
 There was silence after this, and Francie wondered what 
 had made Charlotte suddenly get so cross for nothing ; she 
 had been so good-natured for the last week. The thought 
 passed through her mind that possibly Mr. Lambert had 
 taken as little notice of Charlotte as of the wreath ; she was 
 just sufficiently aware of the state of affairs to know that 
 such a cause might have such an effect, and she wished she 
 had tried any other topic of conversation. Darning is, how- 
 ever, an occupation that does not tend to unloose the 
 strings of the tongue, and even when carried out according 
 to the unexacting methods of Macadam, it demands a cer- 
 tain degree of concentration, and Francie left to Charlotte 
 the task of finding a more congenial subject. It was 
 chosen with unexpected directness. 
 
 11 What was the matter with you yesterday afternoon when 
 Louisa brought in the tea ? " 
 
 Francie felt as though a pistol had been let off at her ear ; 
 the blood surged in a great wave from her heart to her head, 
 her heart gave a shattering thump against her side, and 
 then went on beating again in a way that made her hands 
 shake. 
 
 "Yesterday afternoon, Charlotte?" she said, while her 
 brain sought madly for a means of escape and found none ; 
 " there there was nothing the matter with me." 
 
 " Look here now, Francie ; " Charlotte turned away from 
 her davenport, and faced her cousin with her fists clenched 
 
250 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 on her knees ; " I'm in loco parentis to you for the time 
 being your guardian, if you understand that better and 
 there's no good in your beating about the bush with me. 
 What happened between you and Christopher Dysart yester- 
 day afternoon ? " 
 
 " Nothing happened at all," said Francie in a low voice 
 that gave the lie to her words. 
 
 " You're telling me a falsehood ! How have you the 
 face to tell me there was nothing happened when even 
 that fool Louisa could see that something had been 
 going on to make you cry, and to send him packing out 
 of the house not a quarter of an hour after he came 
 into it ! " 
 
 " I told you before he couldn't wait," said Francie, trying 
 to keep the tremble out of her voice. She held the con- 
 ventional belief that Charlotte was queer, but very kind and 
 jolly, but she had a fear of her that she could hardly have 
 given a reason for. It must have been by that measuring 
 and crossing of weapons that takes place unwittingly and 
 yet surely in the consciousness of everyone who lives in in- 
 timate connection with another, that she had learned, like 
 her great-aunt before her, the weight of the real Charlotte's 
 will, and the terror of her personality. 
 
 " Stuff and nonsense ! " broke out Miss Mullen, her eyes 
 beginning to sparkle ominously ; " thank God I'm not such 
 an ass as the people you've taken in before now ; ye'll not 
 find it so easy to make a fool of me as ye think ! Did he 
 make ye an offer or did he not ? " She leaned forward with 
 her mouth half open, and Francie felt her breath strike on 
 her face, and shrank back. 
 
 " Hehe did not" 
 
 Charlotte dragged her chair a pace nearer so that her 
 knees touched Francie. 
 
 " Ye needn't tell me any lies, Miss ; if he didn't propose, 
 he said something that was equivalent to a proposal. Isn't 
 that the case ? " 
 
 Francie had withdrawn herself as far into the corner of the 
 window as was possible, and the dark folds of the maroon rep 
 curtain made a not unworthy background for her fairness. 
 Her head was turned childishly over her shoulder in the 
 attempt to get as far as she could from her tormentor, and 
 
The Real Charlotte. 251 
 
 her eyes travelled desperately and yet unconsciously over 
 the dingy lines of the curtain. 
 
 " I told you already, Charlotte, that he didn't propose to 
 me," she answered ; " he just paid a visit here like anyone 
 else, and then he had to go away early." 
 
 " Don't talk such baldherdash to me ! I know what he 
 comes here for as well as you do, and as well as every soul 
 in Lismoyle knows it, and I'll trouble ye to answer one ques- 
 tion do ye mean to marry him ? " She paused and gave 
 the slight and shapely arm a compelling squeeze. 
 
 Francie wrenched her arm away. " No, I don't J " she 
 said, sitting up and facing Charlotte with eyes that had a 
 dawning light of battle in them. 
 
 Charlotte pushed back her chair, and with the same 
 action was on her feet. 
 
 " Oh, my God ! " she bawled, flinging up both her arms 
 with the fists clenched ; " d'ye hear that ? She dares to 
 tell me that to me face after all I've done for her ! " Her 
 hands dropped down, and she stared at Francie with her 
 thick lips working in a dumb transport of rage. " And who 
 are ye waiting for ? Will ye tell me that ! You, that aren't 
 fit to lick the dirt off Christopher Dysart's boots ! " she went 
 on, with the uncontrolled sound in her voice that told that 
 rage was bringing her to the verge of tears ; " for the Prince 
 of Wales' son, I suppose ? Or are ye cherishing hopes that 
 your friend Mr. Hawkins would condescend to take a fancy 
 to you again ? " She laughed repulsively, waiting with a 
 heaving chest for the reply, and Francie felt as if the knife 
 had been turned in the wound. 
 
 " Leave me alone ! What is it to you who I marry ? " 
 she cried passionately ; " I'll marry who I like, and no 
 thanks to you ! " 
 
 " Oh, indeed," said Charlotte, breathing hard and loud 
 between the words ; " it's nothing to me, I suppose, that 
 I've kept the roof over your head and put the bit into your 
 mouth, while ye're carrying on with every man that ye can 
 get to look at ye ! " 
 
 " I'm not asking you to keep me," said Francie, starting 
 up in her turn and standing in the window facing her cousin ; 
 " I'm able to keep myself, and to wait as long as I choose 
 till I get married ; /'m not afraid of being an old maid ! ' 
 
252 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 They glared at each other, the fire of anger smiting on 
 both their faces, lighting Francie's cheek with a malign 
 brilliance, and burning in ugly purple-red on Charlotte's 
 leathery skin. The girl's aggressive beauty was to Charlotte 
 a keener taunt than the rudimentary insult of her words ; it 
 brought with it a swarm of thoughts that buzzed and stung 
 in her soul like poisonous flies. 
 
 "And might one be permitted to ask how long you're 
 going to wait ? " she said, with quivering lips drawn back ; 
 " will six months be enough for you, or do you consider the 
 orthodox widower's year too long to wait ? I daresay you'll 
 have found out what spending there is in twenty-five pounds 
 before that, and ye'll go whimpering to Roddy Lambert, and 
 asking him to make ye Number Two, and to pay your debts 
 and patch up your character ! " 
 
 " Roddy Lambert ! " cried Francie, bursting out into shrill 
 unpleasant laughter ; " I think I'll try and do better than 
 that, thank ye, though you're so kind in making him a 
 present to me ! " Then, firing a random shot, " I'll not 
 deprive you of him, Charlotte ; you may keep him all to 
 yourself ! " 
 
 It is quite within the bounds of possibility that Charlotte 
 might at this juncture have struck Francie, and thereby 
 have put herself for ever into a false position, but her 
 guardian angel, in the shape of Susan, the grey , tom-cat, 
 intervened. He had jumped in at the window during the 
 discussion, and having rubbed himself unnoticed against 
 Charlotte's legs with stiff, twitching tail, and cold eyes fixed 
 on her face, he, at this critical instant, sprang upwards at 
 her, and clawed on to the bosom of her dress, hanging there 
 in expectation of the hand that should help him to the 
 accustomed perch on his mistress's shoulder. The blow 
 that was so near being Francie's descended upon the cat's 
 broad confident face and hurled him to the ground. He 
 bolted out of the window again, and when he was safely on 
 the gravel walk, turned and looked back with an expression 
 of human anger and astonishment. 
 
 When Charlotte spoke her voice was caught away from 
 her as Christopher Dysart's had been the day before. All 
 the passions have but one instrument to play on when they 
 
The Real Charlotte. 253 
 
 wish to make themselves heard, and it will yield but a 
 broken sound when it is too hardly pressed. 
 
 " Dare to open your mouth to me again, and I'll throw 
 you out of the window after the cat ! " was what she said in 
 that choking whisper. " Ye can go out of this house to- 
 morrow and see which of your lovers will keep ye the 
 longest, and by the time that they're tired of ye, maybe 
 ye'll regret that your impudence got ye turned out of a 
 respectable house ! " She turned at the last word, and, like 
 a madman who is just sane enough to fear his own mad- 
 ness, flung out of the room without another glance at her 
 cousin. 
 
 Susan sat on the gravel path, and in the intervals of lick 
 ing his paws in every crevice and cranny, surveyed his 
 mistress's guest with a stony watchfulness as she leaned her 
 head against the window-sash and shook in a paroxysm of 
 sobs. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 MORE than the half of September had gone by. A gale 
 or two had browned the woods, and the sky was beginning 
 to show through the trees a good deal. Miss Greely re- 
 moved the sun-burned straw hats from her window, and 
 people lighted their fires at afternoon tea-time, and daily 
 said to each other with sapient gloom, that the evenings 
 were closing in very much. The summer visitors had gone, 
 and the proprietors of lodgings had moved down from the 
 attics to the front parlours, and were restoring to them their 
 usual odour of old clothes, sour bread, and apples. All the 
 Dysarts, with the exception of Sir Benjamin, were away ; 
 the Bakers had gone to drink the waters at Lisdoonvarna j 
 the Beatties were having their yearly outing at the Sea 
 Road in Galway ; the Archdeacon had exchanged duties 
 with an English cleric, who was married, middle-aged, and 
 altogether unadvantageous, and Miss Mullen played the 
 organ, and screamed the highest and most ornate tunes in 
 company with the attenuated choir. 
 
 The barracks kept up an outward seeming of life and 
 cheerfulness, imparted by the adventitious aid of red coats 
 and bugle-blowing, but their gaiety was superficial, and even 
 
254 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 upon Cursiter, steam-launching to nowhere in particular and 
 back again, had begun to pall. He looked forward to his 
 subaltern's return with an eagerness quite out of proportion 
 to Mr. Hawkins' gifts of conversation or companionship ; 
 solitude and steam-launching were all very well in modera- 
 tion, but he could not get the steam-launch in after dinner 
 to smoke a pipe, and solitude tended to unsettling reflections 
 on the vanity of his present walk of life. Hawkins, when 
 he came, was certainly a variant in the monotony, but 
 Cursiter presently discovered that he would have to add to 
 the task of amusing himself the still more arduous one of 
 amusing his companion. Hawkins dawdled, moped, and 
 grumbled, and either spent the evenings in moody silence, 
 or in endless harangues on the stone-broken nature of his 
 finances, and the contrariness of things in general. He ad- 
 mitted his engagement to Miss Coppard with about as ill 
 a grace as was possible, and when rallied about it, became 
 sulky and snappish, but of Francie he never spoke, and 
 Cursiter augured no good from these indications. Captain 
 Cursiter knew as little as the rest of Lismoyle as to the 
 reasons of Miss Fitzpatrick's abrupt disappearance from 
 Tally Ho, but, unlike the generality of Francie's acquaint- 
 ances, had accepted the fact unquestioningly, and with a 
 simple gratitude to Providence for its interposition in the 
 matter. If only partridge-shooting did not begin in Ireland 
 three weeks later than in any civilised country, thought this 
 much harassed child's guide, it would give them both some- 
 thing better to do than loafing about the lake in the 
 Strpolette. Well, anyhow, the 2oth was only three days off 
 now, and Dysart had given them leave to shoot as much as 
 they liked over Bruff, and, thank the Lord, Hawkins was 
 fond of shooting, and there would be no more of this talk of 
 running up to Dublin for two or three days to have his 
 teeth overhauled, or to get a new saddle, or some nonsense 
 of that kind. Neither Captain Cursiter nor Mr. Hawkins 
 paid visits to anyone at this time ; in fact, were never seen 
 except when, attired in all his glory, one or the other took 
 the soldiers to church, and marched them back again with 
 as little delay as possible ; so that the remnant of Lismoyle 
 society pronounced them very stuck-up and unsociable, and 
 mourned for the days of the Tipperary Foragers. 
 
The Real Charlotte. 255 
 
 It was on the first day of the partridge shooting that Mr. 
 Lambert came back to Rosemount The far-away banging 
 of the guns down on the farms by the lake was the first 
 thing he heard as he drove up from the station ; and the 
 thought that occurred to him as he turned in at his own 
 gate was that public opinion would scarcely allow him to 
 shoot this season. He had gone away as soon after his 
 wife's funeral as was practicable, and having honeymooned 
 with his grief in the approved fashion (combining with this 
 observance the settling of business matters with his wife's 
 trustees in Limerick), the stress of his new position might 
 be supposed to be relaxed. He was perfectly aware that 
 the neighbourhood would demand no extravagance of sorrow 
 from him ; no one could expect him to be more than 
 decently regretful for poor Lucy. He had always been a 
 kind husband to her, he reflected, with excusable satis- 
 faction ; that is to say, he had praised her housekeeping, 
 and generally bought her whatever she asked for, out of her 
 own money. He was glad now that he had had the good 
 sense to marry her ; it had made her very happy, poor 
 thing, and he was certainly now in a better position than he 
 could ever have hoped to be if he had not done so. All 
 these soothing and comfortable facts, however, did not 
 prevent his finding the dining-room very dreary and silent 
 when he came downstairs next morning in his new black 
 clothes. His tea tasted as if the water had not been boiled, 
 and the urn got in his way when he tried to prop up the 
 newspaper in his accustomed manner j the bacon dish had 
 been so much more convenient, and the knowledge that his 
 wife was there, ready to receive gratefully any crumb of news 
 that he might feel disposed to let fall, had given a zest to 
 the reading of his paper that was absent now. Even Muffy's 
 basket was empty, for Muffy, since his mistress's death, had 
 relinquished all pretence at gentility, and after a day of 
 miserable wandering about the house, had entered into a 
 league with the cook and residence in the kitchen. 
 
 Lambert surveyed all his surroundings with a loneliness 
 that surprised himself: the egg-cosy that his wife had 
 crocheted for him, the half-empty medicine bottle on the 
 chimney-piece, the chair in which she used to sit, and felt 
 that he did not look forward to the task before him of sort- 
 
The Real Charlotte. 
 
 ing her papers and going through her affairs generally. He 
 got to work at eleven o'clock, taking first the letters and 
 papers that were locked up in a work-table, a walnut-topped 
 and silken-fluted piece of furniture that had been given to 
 Mrs. Lambert by a Limerick friend, and, having been con- 
 sidered too handsome for everyday use, had been consecrated 
 by her to the conservation of letters and of certain valued 
 designs for Berlin wool work and receipts for crochet 
 stitches. Lambert lighted a fire in the drawing-room, and 
 worked his way down through the contents of the green 
 silk pouch, finding there every letter, every note even, that 
 he had ever written to his wife, and committing them to the 
 flames with a curious sentimental regret He had not re- 
 membered that he had written her so many letters, and he 
 said to himself that he wished those old devils of women in 
 Lismoyle, who, he knew, had always been so keen to pity 
 Lucy, could know what a good husband he had been to her. 
 Inside the envelope of one of his own letters was one from 
 Francie Fitzpatrick, evidently accidentally thrust there; a 
 few crooked lines to say that she had got the lodgings for 
 Mrs. Lambert in Charles Street, but the landlady wouldn't 
 be satisfied without she got two and sixpence extra for the 
 kitchen fire. Lambert put the note into his pocket, where 
 there was already another document in the same hand- 
 writing, bearing the Bray postmark with the date of Sep- 
 tember 1 8, and when all was finished, and the grate full of 
 flaky spectral black heaps, he went upstairs and unlocked 
 the door of what had been his wife's room. The shutters 
 were shut, and the air of the room had a fortnight's close- 
 aess in it. When he opened the shutters there was a 
 furious buzzing of flies, and although he had the indifference 
 about fresh air common to his class, he flung up the win- 
 dow, and drew a long breath of the brilliant morning before 
 he went back to his dismal work of sorting and destroying. 
 What was he to do with such things as the old photographs 
 of her father and mother, her work-basket, her salts-bottle, 
 the handbag that she used to carry into Lismoyle with her ? 
 He was not an imaginative man, but he was touched by the 
 smallness, the familiarity of these only relics of a trivial life, 
 and he stood and regarded the sheeted furniture, and the 
 hundred odds and ends that lay about the room, with an 
 
The Real Charlotte. 257 
 
 acute awakening to her absence that, for the time, almost 
 obliterated his own figure, posing to the world as an interest- 
 ing young man, who, while anxious to observe the decencies 
 of bereavement, could not be expected to be inconsolable 
 for a woman so obviously beneath his level. 
 
 A voice downstairs called his name, a woman's voice, 
 saying, " Roderick ! " and for a moment a superstitious 
 tbiill ran through him. Then he heard a footstep in the 
 passage, and the voice called him again, " Are you there, 
 Roderick?" 
 
 This time he recognised Charlotte Mullen's voice, and 
 went out on to the landing to meet her. The first thing 
 that he noticed was that she was dressed in new clothes, 
 black and glossy and well made. He took them in with the 
 glance that had to be resjionsive as well as observant, as 
 Charlotte advanced upon him, and, taking his hand in both 
 hers, shook it long and silently. 
 
 ' Well, Roderick," she said at length, " I'm glad to see 
 you back again, though it's a sad home-coming for you and 
 for us all." 
 
 Lambert pressed her large well-known hand, while his 
 eyes rested solemnly upon her face. " Thank you, Char- 
 lotte, I'm very much obliged to you for coming over to see 
 me this way, but it's no more than what I'd have expected 
 of you." 
 
 He had an ancient confidence in Charlotte and an ease 
 in her society after all, there are very few men who will 
 not find some saving grace in a woman whose affections 
 they believe to be given to them and he was truly glad to 
 see her at this juncture. She was exactly the person that he 
 wanted to help him in the direful task that he had yet to 
 perform; her capable hands should undertake all the 
 necessary ransacking of boxes and wardrobes, while he sat 
 and looked on at what was really much more a woman's 
 work than a man's. These thoughts passed through his 
 mind while he and Charlotte exchanged conventionalities 
 suitable to the occasion, and spoke of Mrs. Lambert as 
 " she," without mentioning her name. 
 
 " Would you like to come downstairs, Charlotte, and sit 
 in the drawing-room ? " he said, presently ; "if it wasn't 
 that I'm afraid you might be tired after your walk, I'd ask 
 
 R 
 
258 The Real Charlotte* 
 
 you to help me with a very painful bit of work that I was 
 just at when you came." 
 
 They had been standing in the passage, and Charlotte's 
 eyes darted towards the half-open door of Mrs. Lambert's 
 room. 
 
 "You're settling her things, I suppose?" she said, her 
 voice treading eagerly upon the heels of his ; " is it that you 
 want me to help you with ? n 
 
 He led the way into the room without answering, and 
 indicated its contents with a comprehensive sweep of his 
 hand. 
 
 " I turned the key in this door myself when I came back 
 from the funeral, and not a thing in it has been touched 
 since. Now I must set to work to try and get the things 
 sorted, to see what I should give away, and what I should 
 keep, and what should be destroyed," he said, his voice re- 
 suming its usual business tone, tinged with just enough 
 gloom to mark his sense of the situation. 
 
 Charlotte peeled off her black gloves and stuffed them 
 into her pocket. " Sit down, my poor fellow, sit down, and 
 I'll do it all," she said, stripping an arm-chair of its sheet 
 and dragging it to the window; "this is no fit work for 
 you." 
 
 There was no need to press this view upon Lambert ; he 
 dropped easily into the chair provided for him, and in a 
 couple of minutes the work was under weigh. 
 
 " Light your pipe now and be comfortable," said Char- 
 lotte, issuing from the wardrobe with an armful of clothes 
 and laying them on the bed; "there's work here for th* 
 rest of the morning." She took up a black satin skirt and 
 held it out in front of her ; it had been Mrs. Lambert's 
 " Sunday best," and it seemed to Lambert as though he 
 could hear his wife's voice asking anxiously if he thought 
 the day was fine enough for her to wear it. " Now what 
 would you wish done with this ? " said Charlotte, looking at 
 it fondly, and holding the band against her own waist to see 
 the length. " It's too good to give to a servant." 
 
 Lambert turned his head away. There was a crudeness 
 about this way of dealing that was a little jarring at first. 
 
 " I don't know what's to be done with it," he said, with 
 all a man's helpless dislike of such details. 
 
The Real Charlotte. 259 
 
 " Well, there's this, and her sealskin, and a lot of other 
 things that are too good to be given to servants," went on 
 Charlotte, rapidly bringing forth more of the treasures of 
 the poor turkey-hen's wardrobe, and proceeding to sort 
 them into two heaps on the floor. "What would you 
 think of making up the best of the things and sending 
 them up to one of those dealers in Dublin ? It's a sin to 
 let them go to loss." 
 
 " Oh, damn it, Charlotte ! I can't sell her clothes ! " said 
 Lambert hastily. He pretended to no sentiment about his 
 wife, but some masculine instinct of chivalry gave him a 
 shock at the thought of making money out of the conven- 
 tional sanctities of a woman's apparel. 
 
 " Well, what else do you propose to do with them ? " said 
 Charlotte, who had already got out a pencil and paper and 
 was making a list. 
 
 " Upon my soul, I don't know," said Lambert, beginning 
 to realise that there was but one way out of the difficulty, 
 and perceiving with irritated amusement that Charlotte had 
 driven him towards it like a sheep, " unless you'd like them 
 yourself?" 
 
 "And do you think I'd accept them from you?" de- 
 manded Charlotte, with an indignation so vivid that even 
 the friend of her youth was momentarily deceived and 
 almost frightened by it ; " I, that was poor Lucy's oldest 
 friend ! Do you think I could bear " 
 
 Lambert saw the opportunity that had been made for 
 him. 
 
 " It's only because you were her oldest friend that I'd 
 offer them to you," he struck in ; " and if you won't have 
 them yourself, I thought you might know of someone that 
 would." 
 
 Charlotte swallowed her wrath with a magnanimous effort. 
 " Well, Roddy, if you put it in that way, I don't like to 
 refuse," she said, wiping a ready tear away with a black- 
 edged pocket handkerchief ; " it's quite true, I know plenty 
 would be glad of a help. There's that unfortunate Letitia 
 Fitzpatrick, that I'll be bound hasn't more than two gowns 
 to her back ; I might send her a bundle." 
 
 " Send them to whom you like," said Lambert, ignoring 
 the topic of the Fitzpatricks as intentionally as it had been 
 
2<5o The Real Charlotte. 
 
 introduced ; " but I'd be glad if you could find some things 
 for Julia Duffy ; I suppose she'll be coming out of the 
 infirmary soon. What we're to do about that business I 
 don't know," he continued, filling another pipe. " Dysart 
 said he wouldn't have her put out if she could hold on 
 anyway at all " 
 
 " Heavenly powers ! " exclaimed Charlotte, letting fall a 
 collection of rolled-up kid gloves, " d'ye mean to say you 
 didn't hear she's in the Ballinasloe Asylum ? She was sent 
 there three days ago." 
 
 " Great Scot ! Is she gone mad ? I was thinking all 
 this time what I was to do with her ! " 
 
 "Well, you needn't trouble your head about her any 
 more. Her wits went as her body mended, and a board of 
 J.P.'s and M.D.'s sat upon her, and as one of them was old 
 Fatty Ffolliott, you won't be surprised to hear that that was 
 the end of Julia Duffy." 
 
 Both laughed, and both felt suddenly the incongruity of 
 laughter in that room. Charlotte went back to the chest 
 of drawers whose contents she was ransacking, and con- 
 tinued : 
 
 " They say she sits all day counting her fingers and toes 
 and calling them chickens and turkeys, and saying that she 
 has the key of Gurthnamuckla in her pocket, and not a one 
 can get into it without her leave." 
 
 " And are you still on for it ? " said Lambert, half re- 
 luctantly, as it seemed to Charlotte's acute ear, " for if you 
 are, now's your time. I might have put her out of it two 
 years ago for non-payment of rent, and I'll just take posses- 
 sion and sell off what she has left behind her towards the 
 arrears." 
 
 " On for it ? Of course I am. You might know I'm not 
 one to change my mind about a thing I'm set upon. But 
 you'll have to let me down easy with the fine, Roddy. 
 There isn't much left in the stocking these times, and 
 one or two of my poor little dabblings in the money-market 
 have rather * gone agin me.' " 
 
 Lambert thought in a moment of those hundreds that 
 had been lent to him, and stirred uneasily in his chair. 
 "By the way, Charlotte," he said, trying to speak like a 
 man to whom such things were trifles, " about that money 
 
The Real Charlotte. 261 
 
 you lent me I'm afraid I can't let you have it back for a 
 couple of months or so. Of course, I needn't tell you, poor 
 Lucy's money was only settled on me for my life, and now 
 there's some infernal delay before they can hand even the 
 interest over to me ; but, if you don't mind waiting a bit, I 
 can make it all square for you about the farm, I know." 
 
 He inwardly used a stronger word than infernal as he re- 
 flected that if Charlotte had not got that promise about the 
 farm out of him when he was in a hole about money, he 
 might have been able, somehow, to get it himself now. 
 
 " Don't mention that don't mention that," said Char- 
 lotte, absolutely blushing a little, " it was a pleasure to me 
 to lend it to you, Roddy ; if I never saw it again I'd rather 
 that than that you should put yourself out to pay me before 
 it was convenient to you." She caught up a dress and 
 shook its folds out with unnecessary vehemence. " I won't 
 be done all night if I delay this way. Ah ! how well I re- 
 member this dress ! Poor dear Lucy got it for Fanny 
 Waller's wedding. Who'd ever think she'd have kept it for 
 all those years ! Roddy, what stock would you put on 
 Gurthnamuckla ? " 
 
 " Dry stock," answered Lambert briefly. 
 
 " And how about the young horses ? You don't forget 
 the plan we had about them ? You don't mean to give it 
 up, I hope ? " 
 
 " Oh, that's as you please," replied Lambert. He was 
 very much interested in the project, but he had no inten- 
 tion of letting Charlotte think so. 
 
 She looked at him, reading his thoughts more clearly 
 than he would have liked, and they made her the more 
 resolved upon her own line of action. She saw herself 
 settled at Gurthnamuckla, with Roddy riding over three or 
 four times a week to see his young horses, that should graze 
 her grass and fill her renovated stables, while she, the 
 bland lady of the manor, should show what a really intelli- 
 gent woman could do at the head of affairs ; and the three 
 hundred pound debt should never be spoken of, but should 
 remain, like a brake, in readiness to descend and grip at 
 the discretion of the driver. There was no fear of his pay- 
 ing it of his own accord. He was not the man she took 
 him for if he paid a debt without due provocation ; he had 
 
262 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 a fine crop of them to be settled as it was, and that would 
 take the edge off his punctilious scruples with regard to 
 keeping her out of her money. 
 
 The different heaps on the floor increased materially 
 while these reflections passed through Miss Mullen's brain. 
 It was characteristic of her that a distinct section of it had 
 never ceased from appraising and apportioning dresses, 
 dolmans and bonnets, with a nice regard to the rival claims 
 of herself, Eliza Hackett the cook, and the rest of the 
 establishment, and still deeper in its busy convolutions 
 though this simile is probably unscientific lurked and 
 grew the consciousness that Francie's name had not yet 
 been mentioned. The wardrobe was cleared at last, a 
 scarlet flannel dressing-gown topping the heap that was des- 
 tined for Tally Ho, and Charlotte had already settled the 
 question as to whether she should bestow her old one upon 
 Norry or make it into a bed for a cat. Lambert finished 
 his second pipe, and stretching himself, yawned drearily, as 
 though, which was indeed the case, the solemnity of the 
 occasion had worn off and its tediousness had become pro- 
 nounced. He looked at his watch. 
 
 " Half-past twelve, by Jove ! Look here, Charlotte, let's 
 come down and have a glass of sherry." 
 
 Charlotte got up from her knees with alacrity, though the 
 tone in which she accepted the invitation was fittingly 
 lugubrious. She was just as glad to leave something un- 
 finished for the afternoon, and there was something very 
 intimate and confidential about a friendly glass of sherry in 
 the middle of a joint day's work. It was not until Lambert 
 had helped himself a second time from the decanter of 
 brown sherry that Miss Mullen saw her opportunity to 
 approach a subject that was becoming conspicuous by its 
 absence. She had seated herself, not without consciousness, 
 in what had been Mrs. Lambert's chair; she was feeling 
 happier than she had been since the time when Lambert 
 was a lanky young clerk in her father's office, with a pre- 
 cocious moustache and an affectionately free and easy 
 manner, before Rosemount had been built, or Lucy Galvin 
 thought of. She could think of Lucy now without resent- 
 ment, even with equanimity, and that last interview, when 
 her friend had died on the very spot where the sunlight was 
 
The Real Charlotte. 263 
 
 now resting at her feet, recurred to her without any un- 
 pleasantness. She had fought a losing battle against fate 
 all her life, and she could not be expected to regret having 
 accepted its first overture of friendship, any more than she 
 need be expected to refuse another half glass of that 
 excellent brown sherry that Lambert had just poured out for 
 her. " Charlotte could take her whack," he was wont to 
 say to their mutual friends in that tone of humorous appre- 
 ciation that is used in connection with a gentlemanlike 
 capacity for liquor. 
 
 " Well, how are you all getting on at Tally Ho ? " he said 
 presently, and not all the self-confidence induced by the 
 sherry could make his voice as easy as he wished it to be ; 
 " I hear you've lost your young lady ?" 
 
 Charlotte was provoked to feel the blood mount slowly to 
 her face and remain like a hot straddle across her cheeks 
 and nose. 
 
 " Oh yes," she said carelessly, inwardly cursing the 
 strength of Lambert's liquor, " she took herself off in a huff, 
 and I only hope she's not repenting of it now." 
 
 " What was the row about ? Did you smack her for 
 pulling the cats' tails ? " Lambert had risen from the table 
 and was trimming his nails with a pocket-knife, but out of 
 the tail of his eye he was observing his visitor very closely. 
 
 "I gave her some good advice, and I got the usual 
 amount of gratitude for it," said Charlotte, in the voice of a 
 person who has been deeply wounded, but is not going to 
 make a fuss about it She had no idea how much Lambert 
 knew, but she had, at all events, one line of defence that 
 was obvious and secure. 
 
 Lambert, as it happened, knew nothing except that there 
 had been what the letter in his pocket described as " a real 
 awful row," and his mordant curiosity forced him to the 
 question that he knew Charlotte was longing for him to ask. 
 
 " What did you give her advice about ? " 
 
 " I may have been wrong," replied Miss Mullen, with the 
 liberality that implies the certainty of having been right, 
 " but when I found that she was carrying on with that good- 
 for-nothing Hawkins, I thought it my duty to give her my 
 opinion, and upon me word, as long as he's here she's well 
 out of the place.'' 
 
264 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 "How did you find out she was carrying on with 
 Hawkins ? " asked Lambert, with a hoarseness in his voice 
 that belied its indifference. 
 
 " I knew that they were corresponding, and when I taxed 
 her with carrying on with him she didn't attempt to deny it, 
 and told me up to my face that she could mind her own 
 affairs without my interference. ' Very well, Miss,' says I, 
 ' you'll march out of my house ! ' and off she took herself 
 next morning, and has never had the decency to send me a 
 line since." 
 
 " Is she in Dublin now ? " asked Lambert with the 
 carelessness that was so much more remarkable than an 
 avowed interest. 
 
 " No ; she's with those starving rats of Fitzpatricks ; they 
 were glad enough to get hold of her to squeeze what they 
 could out of her twenty-five pounds a year, and I wish them 
 joy of their bargain ! " 
 
 Charlotte pushed back her chair violently, and her hot 
 face looked its ugliest as some of the hidden hatred showed 
 itself. But Lambert felt that she did well to be angry. In 
 the greater affairs of life he believed in Charlotte, and he 
 admitted to himself that she had done especially well in 
 sending Francie to Bray. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 THE house that the Fitzpatricks had taken in Bray for the 
 winter was not situated in what is known as the fashionable 
 part of the town. It commanded no view either of the 
 Esplanade or of Bray Head ; it had, in fact, little view of 
 any kind except the backs of other people's houses, and an 
 oblique glimpse of a railway bridge at the end of the road. 
 It was just saved from the artisan level by a tiny bow win- 
 dow on either side of the hall door, and the name, Albatross 
 Villa, painted on the gate posts ; and its crowning claim to 
 distinction was the fact that by standing just outside the 
 gate it was possible to descry, under the railway bridge, a 
 small square of esplanade and sea that was Mrs. Fitzpatrick's 
 justification when she said gallantly to her Dublin friends 
 
The Real Charlotte. 265 
 
 that she'd never have come to Bray for the winter only for 
 being able to look out at the waves all day long. 
 
 Poor Mrs. Fitzpatrick did not tell her friends that she 
 had, nowadays, things to occupy herself with that scarcely 
 left her time for taking full advantage of this privilege. From 
 the hour of the awakening of her brood to that midnight 
 moment when, with fingers roughened and face flushed from 
 the darning of stockings, she toiled up to bed, she was 
 scarcely conscious that the sea existed, except when Dottie 
 came in with her boots worn into holes by the pebbles of 
 the beach, or Georgie's Sunday trousers were found to be 
 smeared with tar from riding astride the upturned boats. 
 There were no longer for her the afternoon naps that were 
 so pleasantly composing after four o'clock dinner ; it was 
 now her part to clear away and wash the dishes and plates, 
 so as to leave Bridget, the " general," free to affair herself 
 with the clothes-lines in the back garden, whereon the family 
 -linen streamed and ballooned in the east wind that is the 
 winter prerogative of Bray. She had grown perceptibly 
 thinner under this discipline, and her eyes had dark swellings 
 beneath them that seemed pathetically unbecoming to any- 
 one who, like Francie, had last seen her when the rubicund 
 prosperity of Mountjoy Square had not yet worn away. 
 Probably an Englishwoman of her class would have kept her 
 household in comparative comfort with less effort and more 
 success, but Aunt Tish was very far from being an English- 
 woman ; her eyes were not formed to perceive dirt, nor her 
 nose to apprehend smells, and her idea of domestic economy 
 was to indulge in no extras of soap or scrubbing brushes, 
 and to feed her family on strong tea and indifferent bread 
 and butter, in order that Ida's and Mabel's hats might be 
 no whit less ornate than those of their neighbours. 
 
 Francie had plunged into the heart of this squalor with 
 characteristic recklessness ; and the effusion of welcome 
 with which she had been received, and the comprehensive 
 abuse lavished by Aunt Tish upon Charlotte, were at first 
 sufficient to make her forget the frouziness of the dining- 
 room, and the fact that she had to share a bedroom with 
 her cousins, the two Misses Fitzpatrick. Francie had kept 
 the particulars of her fight with Charlotte to herself. Per- 
 haps she felt that it would not be easy to make the position 
 
266 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 clear to Aunt Tish's comprehension which was of a rudi- 
 mentary sort in such matters, and apt to jump to crude con- 
 clusions. Perhaps she had become aware that even the 
 ordinary atmosphere of her three months at Lismoyle was 
 as far beyond Aunt Tish's imagination as the air of Paradise, 
 but she certainly was not inclined to enlarge on her senti- 
 mental experiences to her aunt and cousins ; all that they 
 knew was, that she had " moved in high society," and that 
 she had fought with Charlotte Mullen on general and 
 laudable grounds. It was difficult at times to parry the 
 direct questions of Ida, who, at sixteen, had already, with 
 the horrible precocity prevalent in her grade of society, 
 passed through several flirtations of an out-door and illicit 
 kind ; but if Ida's curiosity could not be parried it could be 
 easily misled, and the family belief in Francie's power of 
 breaking, impartially, the hearts of all the young men whom 
 she met, was a shield to her when she was pressed too 
 nearly about " young Mr. Dysart," or " th' officers." Loud, 
 of course, and facetious were the lamentations that Francie 
 had not returned " promised " to one or other of these 
 heroes of romance, but not even Ida's cultured capacity 
 could determine which had been the more probable victim. 
 The family said to each other in private that Francie had 
 " got very close " ; even the boys were conscious of a certain 
 strangeness about her, and did not feel inclined to show her, 
 as of yore, the newest subtlety in catapults, or the latest 
 holes in their coats. 
 
 She herself was far more conscious of strangeness and 
 remoteness ; though, when she had first arrived at Albatross 
 Villa, the crowded, carpetless house, and the hourly conflict 
 of living were reviving and almost amusing after the thunder- 
 ous gloom of her exit from Tally Ho. Almost the first 
 thing she had done had been to write to Hawkins to tell 
 him of what had happened ; a letter that her tears had 
 dropped on, and that her pen had flown in the writing of, 
 telling how she had been turned out because she had re- 
 fused or as good as refused Mr. Dysart for his Gerald's 
 sake, and how she hoped he hadn't written to Tally Ho, 
 "for it's little chance there'd be Charlotte would send on the 
 letter." Francie had intended to break off at this point, and 
 leave to Gerald's own conscience the application of the 
 
The Real Charlotte. 267 
 
 hint; but an unused half sheet at the end of her letter 
 tempted her on, and before she well knew what she was 
 saying, all the jealousy and hurt tenderness and helpless 
 craving of the past month were uttered without a thought 
 of diplomacy or pride. Then a long time had gone by, and 
 there had been no answer from Hawkins. The outflung 
 emotion that had left her spent and humbled, came back in 
 bitterness to her, as the tide gives back in a salt flood the 
 fresh waters of a river, and her heart closed upon it, and 
 bore the pain as best it might. 
 
 It was not till the middle of October that Hawkins 
 answered her letter. She knew before she opened the 
 envelope that she was going to be disappointed ; how could 
 anyone explain away a silence of two months on one sheet 
 of small note-paper, one side of which, as she well knew, 
 was mainly occupied by the regimental crest, much less 
 reply in the smallest degree to that letter that had cost so 
 much in the writing, and so much more in the repenting of 
 its length and abandonment ? Mr. Hawkins had wisely 
 steered clear of both difficulties by saying no more than 
 that he had been awfully glad to hear from her, and he 
 would have written before if he could, but somehow he 
 never could find a minute to do so. He would have given 
 a good deal to have seen that row with Miss Mullen, and 
 as far as Dysart was concerned, he thought Miss Mullen 
 had the rights of it ; he was going away on first leave now, 
 and wouldn't be back at Lismoyle till the end of the year, 
 when he hoped he would find her and old Charlotte as 
 good friends as ever. He, Mr. Hawkins, was really not 
 worth fighting about ; he was stonier broke than he had 
 ever been, and, in conclusion, he was hers (with an illegible 
 hieroglyphic to express the exact amount), Gerald Hawkins. 
 
 Like the last letter she had had from him, this had come 
 early in the morning, but on this occasion she could not go 
 up to her room to read it in peace. The apartment that 
 she shared with Ida and Mabel offered few facilities for 
 repose, and none for seclusion, and, besides, there was too 
 much to be done in the way of helping to lay the table and 
 get the breakfast She hurried about the kitchen in her 
 shabby gown, putting the kettle on to a hotter corner of the 
 range, pouring treacle into a jampot, and filling the sugar- 
 
268 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 basin from a paper bag with quick, trembling fingers ', her 
 breath came pantingly, and the letter that she had hidden 
 inside the front of her dress crackled with the angry rise and 
 fall of her breast. That he should advise her to go and 
 make friends with Charlotte, and tell her she had made a 
 mistake in refusing Mr. Dysart, and never say a word about 
 all that she had said to him in her letter ! 
 
 "Francie's got a letter from her sweetheart !" said Mabel, 
 skipping round the kitchen, and singing the words in a 
 kind of chant. "Ask her for the lovely crest for your 
 album, Bobby ! " 
 
 Evidently the ubiquitous Mabel had studied the contents 
 of the letter-box. 
 
 " Ah, it's well to be her," said Bridget, joining in the 
 conversation with her accustomed ease; "it's long before 
 my fella would write me a letter 1 " 
 
 "And it's little you want letters from him/' remarked 
 Bobby, in his slow, hideous, Dublin brogue, " when you're 
 out in the lane talking to another fella every night." 
 
 " Ye lie ! " said Bridget, with a flattered giggle, while 
 Bobby ran up the kitchen stairs after Francie, and took ad- 
 vantage of her having the teapot in one hand and the milk- 
 jug in the other to thrust his treacly fingers into her pocket 
 in search of the letter. 
 
 " Ah, have done ! " said Francie angrily ; " look, your 
 after making me spill the milk 1 " 
 
 But Bobby who had been joined by Mabel, continued his 
 persecutions, till his cousin, freeing herself of her burdens, 
 turned upon him and boxed his ears with a vigour that sent 
 him howling upstairs to complain to his mother. 
 
 After this incident, Francie's life at Albatross Villa went 
 on, as it seemed to her, in a squalid monotony of hopeless- 
 ness. The days became darker and colder, and the food 
 and firing more perceptibly insufficient, and strong tea a 
 more prominent feature of each meal, and even Aunt Tish 
 lifted her head from the round of unending, dingy cares, 
 and saw some change in Francie. She said to Uncle 
 Robert, with an excusable thought of Francie's ungrudging 
 help in the household, and her contribution to it of five 
 shillings a week, that it would be a pity if the sea air didn't 
 suit the girl ; and Uncle Robert, arranging a greasy satin tie 
 
The Real Charlotte. 269 
 
 under his beard at the looking-glass, preparatory to catching 
 the 8.30 train for Dublin, had replied that it wasn't his fault 
 if it didn't, and if she chose to be fool enough to fight with 
 Charlotte Mullen she'd have to put up with it. Uncle 
 Robert was a saturnine little man of small abilities, whose 
 reverses had not improved his temper, and he felt that 
 things were coming to a pretty pass if his wife was going to 
 make him responsible for the sea air, as well as the smoky 
 kitchen chimney, and the scullery sink that Bobby had 
 choked with a dead jelly fish, and everything else. 
 
 The only events that Francie felt to be at all noteworthy 
 were her letters from Mr. Lambert. He was not a brilliant 
 letter writer, having neither originality, nor the gift which is 
 sometimes bestowed on unoriginal people, of conveying 
 news in a simple and satisfying manner ; but his awkward 
 and sterile sentences were as cold waters to the thirsty soul 
 that was always straining back towards its time of abundance. 
 She could scarcely say the word Lismoyle now without a 
 hesitation, it was so shrined in dear and miserable remem- 
 brance, with all the fragrance of the summer embalming it 
 in her mind, that, unselfconscious as she was, the word 
 seemed sometimes too difficult to pronounce. Lambert 
 himself had become a personage of a greater world, and had 
 acquired an importance that he would have resented had he 
 known how wholly impersonal it was. In some ways she did 
 not like him quite as much as in the Dublin days, when he 
 had had the advantage of being the nearest thing to a 
 gentleman that she had met with ; perhaps her glimpses of 
 his home life and the fact of his friendship with Charlotte 
 had been disillusioning, or perhaps the comparison of him 
 with other and newer figures upon her horizon had not 
 been to his advantage ; certainly it was more by virtue of 
 his position in that other world that he was great. 
 
 It was strange that in these comparisons it was to 
 Christopher that she turned for a standard. For her there 
 was no flaw in Hawkins ; her angry heart could name no 
 fault in him except that he had wounded it; but she 
 illogically felt Christopher's superiority without being aware 
 of deficiency in the other. She did not understand 
 Christopher; she had hardly understood him at that 
 moment to which she now looked back with a gratified 
 
270 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 vanity that was tempered by uncertainty and not unmingled 
 with awe; but she knew him just well enough, and had 
 just enough perception to respect him. Fanny Hemphill 
 and Delia Whitty would have regarded him with a terror 
 that would have kept them dumb in his presence, but for 
 which they would have compensated themselves at other 
 times by explosive gigglings at his lack of all that they 
 admired most in young men. Some errant streak of finer 
 sense made her feel his difference from the men she knew, 
 without wanting to laugh at it ; as has already been said, she 
 respected him, an emotion not hitherto awakened by a varied 
 experience of " gentlemen friends." 
 
 There were times when the domestic affairs of Albatross 
 Villa touched their highest possibility of discomfort, when 
 Bridget had gone to the christening of a friend's child at 
 Enniskerry, and returned next day only partially recovered 
 from the potations that had celebrated the event ; or when 
 Dottie, unfailing purveyor of diseases to the family, had im- 
 ported German measles from her school. At these times 
 Francie, as she made fires, or beds, or hot drinks, would 
 think of Bruff and its servants with a regret that was none 
 the less burning for its ignobleness. Several times when she 
 lay awake at night, staring at the blank of her own future, 
 while the stabs of misery were sharp and unescapable, she 
 had thought that she would write to Christopher, and tell 
 him what had happened, and where she was. In those 
 hours when nothing is impossible and nothing is unnatural, 
 his face and his words, when she saw him last, took on their 
 fullest meaning, and she felt as if she had only to put her 
 hand out to open that which she had closed. The diplo- 
 matic letter, about nothing in particular, that should make 
 Christopher understand that she would like to see him again, 
 was often half composed, had indeed often lulled her sore 
 heart and hot eyes to sleep with visions of the divers luxuries 
 and glories that this single stepping-stone should lead to. 
 But in the morning, when the children had gone to school, 
 and she had come in from marketing, it was not such an 
 easy thing to sit down and write a letter about nothing in 
 particular to Mr. Dysart. Her defeat at the hands of 
 Hawkins had taken away her belief in herself. She could 
 not even hint to Christopher the true version of her fight 
 
The Real Charlotte. 271 
 
 with Charlotte, sure though she was that an untrue one had 
 already found its Way to Bruff ; she could not tell him that 
 Bridget had got drunk, and that butter was so dear they had 
 to do without it ; such emergencies did not somehow come 
 within the scope of her promise to trust him, and, besides, 
 there was the serious possibility of his volunteering to see her. 
 She would have given a good deal to see him, but not at 
 Albatross Villa. She pictured him to herself, seated in the 
 midst of the Fitzpatrick family, with Ida making eyes at 
 him from under her fringe, and Bridget scuffling audibly 
 with Bobby outside the door. Tally Ho was a palace com- 
 pared with this, and yet she remembered what she had felt 
 when she came back to Tally Ho from Bruff. When she 
 thought of it all, she wondered whether she could bring 
 herself to write to Charlotte, and try to make friends with 
 her again. It would be dreadful to do, but her life at 
 Albatross Villa was dreadful, and the dream of another visit 
 to Lismoyle, when she could revenge herself on Hawkins 
 by showing him his unimportance to her, was almost too 
 strong for her pride. How much of it was due to her thirst 
 to see him again at any price, and how much to a pitiful 
 hankering after the flesh-pots of Egypt, it is hard to say ; 
 but November and December dragged by, and she did not 
 write to Christopher or Charlotte, and Lambert remained her 
 only correspondent at Lismoyle. 
 
 It was a damp, dark December, with rain and wind nearly 
 every day. Bray Head was rarely without a cap of grey 
 cloud, and a restless pack of waves mouthing and leaping 
 at its foot. The Esplanade was a mile-long vista of soaked 
 grass and glistening asphalte, whereon the foot of man 
 apparently never trod ; once or twice a storm had charged 
 in from the south-east, and had hurled sheets of spray and 
 big stones on to it, and pounded holes in the concrete of its 
 sea-wall. There had been such a storm the week before 
 Christmas. The breakers had rushed upon the long beach 
 with " a broad-flung, shipwrecking roar," and the windows 
 of the houses along the Esplanade were dimmed with salt 
 and sand. The rain had come in under the hall door at 
 Albatross Villa, the cowl was blown off the kitchen chimney, 
 causing the smoke to make its exit through the house by 
 various routes, and, worst of all, Dottie and the boys had 
 
272 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 not been out of the house for two days. Christmas morn- 
 ing was signalised by the heaviest downpour of the week. 
 It was hopeless to think of going to church, least of all for 
 a person whose most presentable boots were relics of the 
 past summer, and bore the cuts of lake rocks on their dulled 
 patent leather. The post came late, after its wont, but it 
 did not bring the letter that Francie had not been able to 
 help expecting. There had been a few Christmas cards, 
 and one letter which did indeed bear the Lismoyle post- 
 mark, but was only a bill from the Misses Greely, forwarded 
 by Charlotte, for the hat that she had bought to replace the 
 one that was lost on the day of the capsize of the Daphne. 
 
 The Christmas mid-day feast of tough roast-beef and 
 pallid plum-pudding was eaten, and then, unexpectedly, the 
 day brightened, a thin sunlight began to fall on the wet 
 roads and the dirty, tossing sea, and Francie and her 
 younger cousins went forth to take the air on the Esplanade. 
 They were the only human beings upon it when they first 
 got there ; in any other weather Francie might have ex- 
 pected to meet a friend or two from Dublin there, as had 
 occurred on previous Sundays, when the still enamoured 
 Tommy Whitty had ridden down on his bicycle, or Fanny 
 Hemphill and her two medical student brothers had asked 
 her to join them in a walk round Bray Head. The society 
 of the Hemphills and Mr. Whitty had lost, for her, much of 
 its pristine charm, but it was better than nothing at all ; in 
 fact, those who saw the glances that Miss Fitzpatrick, from 
 mere force of habit, levelled at Mr. Whitty, or were wit- 
 nesses of a pebble-throwing encounter with the Messrs. 
 Hemphill, would not have guessed that she desired any- 
 thing better than these amusements. 
 
 " Such a Christmas Day ! " she thought to herself, 
 " without a soul to see or to talk to ! I declare, I think I'll 
 turn nurse in a hospital, the way Susie Brennan did. They 
 say those nurses have grand fun, and 'twould be better than 
 this awful old place anyhow ! " She had walked almost to 
 the squat Martello tower, and while she looked discon- 
 tentedly up at Bray Head, the last ray of sun struck on its 
 dark shoulder as if to challenge her with the magnificence 
 of its outline and the untruthfulness of her indictment. 
 " Oh, you may shine away ! " she exclaimed, turning her 
 
The Real Charlotte. 273 
 
 back upon both sunlight and mountain and beginning to 
 walk back to where Bobby and Dottie were searching for 
 jelly-fish among the sea-weed cast up by the storm, " the 
 day's done for now, it's as good for me to go up to the four 
 o'clock service as be streeling about in the cold here." 
 
 Almost at the same moment the chimes from the church 
 on the hill behind the town struck out upon the wind with 
 beautiful severity, and obeying them listlessly, she left the 
 children and turned up the steep suburban road that was 
 her shortest way to Christ Church. 
 
 It was a long and stiffish pull ; the wind blew her hair 
 about till it looked like a mist of golden threads, the colour 
 glowed dazzlingly in her cheeks, and the few men whom she 
 passed bestowed upon her a stare of whose purport she was 
 well aware. This was a class of compliment which she 
 neither resented nor was surprised at, and it is quite possible 
 that some months before she might have allowed her sense 
 of it to be expressed in her face. But she felt now as if the 
 approval of the man in the street was not worth what it used 
 to be. It was, of course, agreeable in its way, but on this 
 Christmas afternoon, with all its inevitable reminders of the 
 past and the future, it brought with it the thought of how 
 soon her face had been forgotten by the men who had 
 praised it most. 
 
 The gas was lighted in the church, and the service was 
 just beginning as she passed the decorated font and went 
 uncertainly up a side-aisle till she was beckoned into a pew 
 by a benevolent old lady. She knelt down in a corner, be- 
 side a pillar that was wreathed with a thick serpent of ever- 
 greens, and the old lady looked up from her admission of 
 sin to wonder that such a pretty girl was allowed to walk 
 through the streets by herself. The heat of the church had 
 brought out the aromatic smell of all the green things, the 
 yellow gas flared from its glittering standards, and the 
 glimmering colours of the east window were dying into 
 darkness with the dying daylight. When she stood up for 
 the psalms she looked round the church to see if there were 
 anyone there whom she knew ; there were several familiar 
 faces, but no one with whom she had ever exchanged a word, 
 and turning round again she devoted herself to the hopeless 
 task of 1 finding out the special psalms that the choir were 
 
 s 
 
274 The Reed Charlotte. 
 
 singing. Having failed in this, she felt her religious duties 
 to be for the time suspended, and her thoughts strayed 
 afield over things in general, settling down finally orf a sub- 
 ject that had become more pressing than was pleasant. 
 
 It is a truism of ancient standing that money brings no 
 cure for heartache, but it is also true that if the money were 
 not there the heartache would be harder to bear. Probably 
 if Francie had returned from Lismoyle to a smart house in 
 Merrion Square, with a carriage to drive in, and a rich rela- 
 tive ready to pay for new winter dresses, she would have 
 been less miserable over Mr. Hawkins* desertion than she 
 was at Albatross Villa; she certainly would not have felt 
 as unhappy as she did now, standing up with the shrill sing- 
 ing clamouring in her ears, while she tried in different ways 
 to answer the question of how she was to pay for the dresses 
 that she had bought to take to Lismoyle. Twenty-five 
 pounds a year does not go far when more than half of it 
 is expended upon board and lodging, and a whole quarter 
 has been anticipated to pay for a summer visit, and Lam- 
 bert's prophecy that she would find herself in the county 
 court some day, seemed not unlikely to come true. In her 
 pocket was a letter from a Dublin shop, containing more 
 than a hint of legal proceedings ; and even if she were able 
 to pay them a temporisirig two pounds in a month, there 
 still would remain five pounds due, and she would not have 
 a farthing left to go on with. Everything was at its darkest 
 for her. Her hardy, supple nature was dispirited beyond 
 its power of reaction, and now and then the remembrance 
 of the Sundays of last summer caught her, till the pain 
 came in her throat, and the gaslight spread into shaking 
 stars. 
 
 The service went on, and Francie rose and knelt 
 mechanically with the rest of the congregation. She was 
 not irreligious, and even the name of scepticism was scarcely 
 understood by her, but she did not consider that religion 
 was applicable to love affairs and bills ; her mind was too 
 young and shapeless for anything but a healthy, negligent 
 belief in what she had been taught, and it did not enter into 
 her head to utilise religion as a last resource, when every- 
 thing else had turned out a failure. She regarded it with 
 respect, and believed that most people grew good when they 
 
The Real Charlotte. 275 
 
 grew old, and the service passed over her head with a 
 vaguely pleasing effect of music and light. As she came 
 out into the dark lofty porch, a man stepped forward to 
 meet her. Francie started violently. 
 
 " Oh, goodness gracious ! " she cried, " you frightened 
 my life out ! " 
 
 But for all that, she was glad to see Mr Lambert. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 THAT evening when Mrs. Fitzpatrick was putting on her 
 best cap and her long cameo ear-rings she said to her 
 husband : 
 
 " Well now, Robert, you mark my words, he's after her." 
 
 " Tchah ! " replied Mr. Fitzpatrick, who was not in a 
 humour to admit that any woman could be attractive, owing 
 to the postponement of his tea by his wife so that cakes 
 might be baked in Mr. Lambert's honour ; " you can't see 
 a man without thinking he's in love with someone 01 
 other." 
 
 "I suppose you think it's to see yourself he's come all 
 the way from Lismoyle," rejoined Mrs. Fitzpatrick with 
 becoming spirit, "and says he's going to stop at Breslin's 
 Hotel for a week ? " 
 
 " Oh, very well, have it your own way," said Mr. Fitz- 
 patrick acrimoniously, " I suppose you have it all settled, 
 and he'll be married to her by special license before the 
 week's out." 
 
 " Well, I don't care, Robert, you wouldn't think to look 
 at him that he'd only buried his wife four months and a 
 half ago though I will say he's in deep mourning but for 
 all that no one'd blame him that he didn't think much of 
 that poor creature, and 'twould be a fine match for Francie 
 if she'd take him." 
 
 " Would she take him ! " echoed Mr. Fitzpatrick scorn- 
 fully ; " would a duck swim ? I never saw the woman yet 
 that wouldn't half hang herself to get married ! " 
 
 "Ah, have done being so cross, Robert, Christmas day 
 and all; I wonder you married at all since you think so 
 little of women." 
 
276 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 Finding this argument not easy to answer, Mr. Fitzpatrick 
 said nothing, and his wife, too much interested to linger 
 over side issues, continued, 
 
 " The girls say they heard him asking her to drive to the 
 Dargle with him to-morrow, and he's brought a grand box 
 of sweets for the children as a Christmas box, and six lovely 
 pair of gloves for Francie ! 'Pon me word, I call her a very 
 lucky girl ! " 
 
 " Well, if I was a woman it isn't that fellow I'd fancy," 
 said Mr. Fitzpatrick, unexpectedly changing his ground, 
 " but as, thank God, I'm not, it's no affair of mine." Hav- 
 ing delivered himself of this sentiment, Mr. Fitzpatrick went 
 downstairs. The smell of hot cakes rose deliciously upon 
 the air, and, as his niece emerged from the kitchen with a 
 plateful of them in her hand, and called to him to hurry 
 before they got cold, he thought to himself that Lambert 
 would have the best of the bargain if he married her. 
 
 Francie found the evening surprisingly pleasant. She 
 was, as she had always been, entirely at her ease with Mr. 
 Lambert, and did not endure, on his account, any vicarious 
 suffering because the table-cloth was far from clean, and the 
 fact that Bridget put on the coal with her fingers was 
 recorded on the edges of the plates. If he chose to come 
 and eat hot cakes in the bosom of the Fitzpatrick family 
 instead of dining at his hotel, he was just as well able to do 
 without a butter-knife as she was, and, at all events, he need 
 not have stayed unless he liked, she thought, with a little 
 flash of amusement and pride that her power over him, at 
 least, was not lost There had been times during the last 
 month or two when she had believed that he, like everyone 
 else, had forgotten her, and it was agreeable to find that she 
 had been mistaken. 
 
 The next day proved to be one of the softest and sunniest 
 of the winter, and, as they flew along the wet road towards 
 the Dargle, on the smartest of the Bray outside cars, a great 
 revival took place in Francie's spirits. They left their car 
 at the gate of the glen to which the Dargle river has given 
 its name, and strolled together along the private road that 
 runs from end to end of it. A few holiday-makers had 
 been tempted down from Dublin by the fine day, but there 
 was nothing that even suggested the noisy pleasure parties 
 
The Real Charlotte. 277 
 
 that vulgarise the winding beauty of the ravine on summer 
 bank holidays. 
 
 "Doesn't it look fearful lonely to-day?" said Francie, 
 who had made her last visit there as a member of one of 
 these same pleasure parties, and had enjoyed herself highly. 
 " You can't hear a thing but the running of the water." 
 
 They were sitting on the low parapet of the road, looking 
 down the brown slope of the tree-tops to the river, that was 
 running a foaming race among the rocks at the bottom of 
 the cleft. 
 
 " I don't call it lonely," said Lambert, casting a discon- 
 tented side-long glance at a couple walking past arm-in-arm, 
 evidently in the silently blissful stage of courtship ; " how 
 many more would you like ? " 
 
 " Oh, lots," replied Francie, " but I'm not going to tell 
 you who they are ! " 
 
 " I know one, anyhow," said Lambert, deliberately lead- 
 ing up to a topic that up to this had been only slightly 
 touched on. 
 
 When he had walked home from the church with Francie 
 the evening before, he had somehow not been able to talk 
 to her consecutively ; he had felt a nervous awkwardness 
 that he had not believed himself capable of, and the fact 
 that he was holding an umbrella over her head and that she 
 had taken his arm had seemed the only thing that he could 
 give his mind to. 
 
 " Who do you know ? " 
 
 Francie had plucked a ribbon of hart's-tongue from the 
 edge of the wall, and was drawing its cold satiny length 
 across her lips. 
 
 " Wouldn't you like it now if you saw " he paused and 
 looked at Francie " who shall we say Charlotte Mullen 
 coming up the road ? " 
 
 " I wouldn't care." 
 
 " Wouldn't you though ! You'd run for your life, the 
 way you did before out of Lismoyle," said Lambert, looking 
 hard at her and laughing not quite genuinely. 
 
 The strip of hart's-tongue could not conceal a rising glow 
 in the face behind it, but Francie's voice was as undaunted 
 as ever as she replied, 
 
 " Who told you I ran for my life ? " 
 
a/8 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 " You told me so yourself." 
 
 " I didn't. I only told you I'd had a row with her." 
 
 " Well, that's as good as saying you had to run. You 
 don't suppose I thought you'd get the better of Charlotte ? " 
 
 " I daresay you didn't, because you're afraid of her 
 yourself!" 
 
 There was a degree of truth in this that made Mr. 
 Lambert suddenly realise Francie's improper levity about 
 serious things. 
 
 " I'll tell you one thing I'm afraid of," he said severely, 
 " and that is that you made a mistake in fighting with Char- 
 lotte. If you'd chosen to to do as she wished, she's easy 
 enough to get on with." 
 
 Francie flung her fern over the parapet and made no 
 answer. 
 
 " I suppose you know she's moved into Gurthnamuckla ? " 
 he went on. 
 
 " I know nothing about anything," interrupted Francie ; 
 " I don't know how long it isn't since you wrote to me, and 
 when you do you never tell me anything. You might be all 
 dead and buried down there for all I know or care ! " 
 
 The smallest possible glance under her eyelids tempered 
 this statement and confused Mr. Lambert's grasp of his 
 subject. 
 
 "Do you mean that, about not caring if I was dead 
 or no? I daresay you do. No one cares now what 
 happens to me.' 
 
 He almost meant what he said, her elusiveness was so 
 exasperating, and his voice told his sincerity. Last summer 
 she would have laughed pitilessly at his pathos, and made 
 it up with him afterwards. But she was changed since last 
 summer, and now as she looked at him she felt a forlorn 
 kinship with him. 
 
 " Ah, what nonsense ! " she said caressingly. " I'd be 
 awfully sorry if anything happened you." As if he could 
 not help himself he took her hand, but before he could 
 speak she had drawn it away. " Indeed, you might have 
 been dead," she went on hurriedly, " for all you told me in 
 your letters. Begin now and tell me the Lismoyle news. I 
 think you said the Dysarts were away from Bruff still, 
 didn't you ? " 
 
The Real Charlotte. 279 
 
 Lambert felt as if a hot and a cold spray of water had 
 been turned on him alternately. " The Dysarts ? Oh, yes, 
 they've been away for some time," he said, recovering him- 
 self ; " they've been in London, I believe, staying with her 
 people, since you're so anxious to know about them." 
 
 "Why wouldn't I want to know about them?" said 
 Francie, getting off the wall. " Come on and walk a bit ; 
 it's cold sitting here." 
 
 Lambert walked on by her side rather sulkily j he was 
 angry with himself for having let his feelings run away with 
 him, and he was angry with Francie for pulling him up so 
 quickly. 
 
 " Christopher Dysart's off again," he said abruptly ; " he's 
 got another of these diplomatic billets." He believed that 
 Francie would find the information unpleasant, and he was 
 in some contradictory way disappointed that she seemed 
 quite unaffected by it. " He's unpaid attache to old Lord 
 Castlemore at Copenhagen/ 1 he went on ; " he started last 
 week." 
 
 So Christopher was gone from her too, and never wrote 
 her a line before he went. They're all the same, she 
 thought, all they want is to spoon a girl for a bit, and if she 
 lets them do it they get sick of her, and whatever she does 
 they forget her the next minute. And there was Roddy 
 Lambert trying to squeeze her hand just now, and poor 
 Mrs. Lambert, that was worth a dozen of him, not dead six 
 months. She walked on, and forced herself to talk to him, 
 and to make inquiries about the Bakers, Dr. Rattray, Mr. 
 Corkran, and other lights of Lismoyle society. It was 
 absurd, but it was none the less true that the news that Mr. 
 Corkran was engaged to Carrie Beattie gave her an 
 additional pang. The enamoured glances of the curate 
 were fresh in her memory, and the thought that they were 
 being now bestowed upon Carrie Beattie's freckles and 
 watering eyes was, though ludicrous, not altogether pleasing. 
 She burst out laughing suddenly. 
 
 "I'm thinking of what all the Beatties will look like 
 dressed as bridesmaids," she explained; "four of them, and 
 every one of them roaring, crying, and their noses bright 
 red!" 
 
 The day was clouding over a little, and a damp wind 
 
280 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 began to stir among the leaves that still hung red on the 
 beech trees. Lambert insisted with paternal determination 
 that Francie should put on the extra coat that he was 
 carrying for her, and the couple who had recently passed 
 them, and whom they had now overtaken, looked at them 
 sympathetically, and were certain that they also were 
 engaged. It took some time to reach the far gate of the 
 Dargle, sauntering as they did from bend to bend of the 
 road, and stopping occasionally to look down at the river, 
 or up at the wooded height opposite, with conventional 
 expressions of admiration ; and by the time they had passed 
 down between the high evergreens at the lodge, to where 
 the car was waiting for them, Francie had heard all that 
 Lambert could tell her of Lismoyle news. She had also 
 been told what a miserable life Mr. Lambert's was, and how 
 lonely he was at Rosemount since poor Lucy's death, and 
 she knew how many young horses he had at grass on 
 Gurthnamuckla, but neither mentioned the name of Mr. 
 Hawkins. 
 
 The day of the Dargle expedition was Tuesday, and 
 during the remainder of the week Mr. Lambert became so 
 familiar a visitor at Albatross Villa, that Bridget learned to 
 know his knock, and did not trouble herself to pull down 
 her sleeves, or finish the mouthful of bread and tea with 
 which she had left the kitchen, before she opened the door. 
 Aunt Tish did not attempt to disguise her satisfaction when 
 he was present, and rallied Francie freely in his absence ; 
 the children were quite aware of the state of affairs, having 
 indeed discussed the matter daily with Bridget ; and Uncle 
 Robert, going gloomily up to his office in Dublin, had to 
 admit to himself that Lambert was certainly paying her 
 great attention, and that after all, all things considered, it 
 would be a good thing for the girl to get a rich husband for 
 herself when she had the chance. It was rather soon after 
 his wife's death for a man to come courting, but of course 
 the wedding wouldn't come off till the twelve months were 
 up, and at the back of these reflections was the remem- 
 brance that he, Uncle Robert, was Francie's trustee, and 
 that the security in which he had invested her five hundred 
 pounds was becoming less sound than he could have 
 wished. 
 
The Real Charlotte. 281 
 
 As is proverbially the case, the principal persons con- 
 cerned were not as aware as the lookers-on of the state of 
 the game. Francie, to whom flirtation was as ordinary and 
 indispensable as the breath of her nostrils, did not feel that 
 anything much out of the common was going on, though 
 she knew quite well that Mr. Lambert was very fond of her; 
 and Mr. Lambert had so firmly resolved on allowing a 
 proper interval to elapse between his wife's death and that 
 election of her successor upon which he was determined, 
 that he looked upon the present episode as of small import- 
 ance, and merely a permissible relaxation to a man whose 
 hunting had been stopped, and who had, in a general way, 
 been having the devil of a dull time. He was to go back 
 to Lismoyle on Monday, the first of the year and it was 
 settled that he was to take Francie on Sunday afternoon to 
 walk on Kingstown pier. The social laws of Mrs Fitz- 
 patrick's world were not rigorous, still less was her interpre- 
 tation of them ; an unchaperoned expedition to Kingstown 
 pier would not, under any circumstances, have scandalised 
 her, and considering that Lambert was an old friend and 
 had been married, the proceeding became almost prudishly 
 correct. As she stood at her window and saw them turn 
 the corner of the road on their way to the station, she 
 observed to Mabel that there wouldn't be a handsomer 
 couple going the pier than what they were, Francie had that 
 stylish way with her that she always gave a nice set to a 
 skirt, and it was wonderful the way she could trim up an 
 old hat the same as new. 
 
 It was a very bright clear afternoon, and a touch of frost 
 in the air gave the snap and brilliancy 'that are often lack- 
 ing in an Irish winter day, On such a Sunday Kingstown 
 pier assumes a fair semblance of its spring and summer 
 gaiety ; the Kingstown people walk there because there is 
 nothing else to be done at Kingstown, and the Dublin 
 people come down to snatch what they can of sea air before 
 the short afternoon darkens, and the hour arrives when 
 they look out for members of the St. George's Yacht Club 
 to take them in to tea. There was a fair sprinkling of 
 people on the long arm of granite that curves for a mile 
 into Dublin Bay, and as Mr. Lambert paced along it he 
 was as agreeably conscious as his companion of the glances 
 
282 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 that met and followed their progress. It satisfied his 
 highest ambition that the girl of his choice should be thus 
 openly admired by men whom, year after year, he had 
 looked up at with envious respect as they stood in the bow- 
 window of Kildare Street Club, with figures that time was 
 slowly shaping to its circular form, on the principle of 
 correspondence with environment. He was a man who 
 had always valued his possessions according to other 
 people's estimation of them, and this afternoon Francie 
 gained a new distinction in his eyes. 
 
 Abstract admiration, however, was one thing, but the 
 very concrete attentions of Mr. Thomas Whitty were quite 
 another affair. Before they had been a quarter of an hour 
 on the pier, Francie was hailed by her Christian name, and 
 this friend of her youth, looking more unmistakably than 
 ever a solicitor's clerk, joined them, flushed with the effort 
 of overtaking them, and evidently determined not to leave 
 them again. 
 
 " I spotted you by your hair, Francie," Mr. Whitty was 
 pleased to observe, after the first greetings ; " you must have 
 been getting a new dye for it; I could see it a mile 
 off!" 
 
 " Oh, yes," responded Francie, " I tried a new bottle the 
 other day, the same you use for your moustache, y'know ! 
 I thought I'd like people to be able to see it without a 
 spy-glass." 
 
 As Mr. Whitty's moustache was represented by three 
 sickly hairs and a pimple, the sarcasm was sufficiently biting 
 to yield Lambert a short-lived gratification. 
 
 " Mr. Lambert dyes his black," continued Francie, with- 
 out a change of countenance. She had the Irish love of a 
 scrimmage in her, and she thought it would be great fun to 
 make Mr. Lambert cross. 
 
 " D'ye find the colour comes off? " murmured Tommy 
 Whitty, eager for revenge, but too much afraid of Lambert 
 to speak out loud. 
 
 Even Francie, though she favoured the repartee with a 
 giggle, was glad that Lambert had not heard. 
 
 " D'ye find you want your ears boxed ? " she returned in 
 the same tone of voice; "I won't walk with you if you 
 don't behave." Inwardly, however, she decided that 
 
The Real Charlotte. 283 
 
 Tommy Whitty was turning into an awful cad, and felt 
 that she would have given a good deal to have wiped 
 out some lively passages in her previous acquaintance 
 with him. 
 
 At the end of half an hour Mr. Whitty was still with them, 
 irrepressibly intimate and full of reminiscence. Lambert, 
 after determined efforts to talk to Francie, as if unaware of 
 the presence of a third person, had sunk into dangerous 
 silence, and Francie had ceased to see the amusing side of 
 the situation, and was beginning to be exhausted by much 
 walking to and fro. The sun set in smoky crimson behind 
 the town, the sun-set gun banged its official recognition of 
 the fact, followed by the wild, clear notes of a bugle, and a 
 frosty after-glow lit up the sky, and coloured the motionless 
 water of the harbour. A big bell boomed a monotonous 
 summons to afternoon service, and people began to leave 
 the pier. Those who had secured the entree of the St. 
 George's Yacht Club proceeded comfortably thither for tea, 
 and Lambert felt that he would have given untold sums for 
 the right to take Francie in under the pillared portico, leav- 
 ing Tommy Whitty and his seedy black coat in outer dark- 
 ness. The party was gloomily tending towards the station, 
 when the happy idea occurred to Mr. Lambert of having 
 tea at the Marine Hotel ; it might not have the distinction 
 of the club, but it would at all events give him the power of 
 shaking off that damned presuming counter-jumper, as in 
 his own mind he furiously designated Mr. Whitty. 
 
 " I'm going to take you up to the hotel for tea, Francie," 
 he said decisively, and turned at once towards the gate of 
 the Marine gardens. " Good evening, Whitty." 
 
 The look that accompanied this valedictory remark was 
 so conclusive that the discarded Tommy could do no more 
 than accept the position. Francie would not come to his 
 help, being indeed thankful to get rid of him, and he could 
 only stand and look after the two figures, and detest Mr. 
 Lambert with every fibre of his little heart. The coffee- 
 room at the hotel was warm and quiet, and Francie sank 
 thankfully into an armchair by the fire. 
 
 " I declare this is the nicest thing I've done to-day," she 
 said, with a sigh of tired ease ; " I was dead sick of walking 
 up and down that old pier." 
 
284 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 This piece of truckling was almost too flagrant, and 
 Lambert would not even look at her as he answered, 
 
 " I thought you seemed to be enjoying yourself, or I'd 
 have come away sooner." 
 
 Francie felt none of the amusement that she would once 
 have derived from seeing Mr. Lambert in a bad temper ; 
 he had stepped into the foreground of her life and was 
 becoming a large and serious object there, too important 
 and powerful to be teased with any degree of pertinacity. 
 
 " Enjoy myself! " she exclaimed, " I was thinking all the 
 time that my boots would be cut to pieces with the horrid 
 gravel ; and," she continued, laying her head on the plush- 
 covered back of her chair, and directing a laughing, pro- 
 pitiatory glance at her companion, " you know I hao! to talk 
 twice as much to poor Tommy because you wouldn't say a 
 word to him. Besides, I knew him long before I knew you." 
 
 "Oh, of course if you don't mind being seen with a 
 fellow that looks like a tailor's apprentice, I have nothing 
 to say against it," replied Lambert, looking down on her, as 
 he stood fingering his moustache, with one elbow on the 
 chimney-piece. His eyes could not remain implacable 
 when they dwelt on the face that was upturned to him, 
 especially now, when he felt both in face and manner some- 
 thing of pathos and gentleness that was as new as it was 
 intoxicating. 
 
 If he had known what it was that had changed her he 
 might have been differently affected by it ; as it was, he put 
 it down to the wretchedness of life at Albatross Villa, and 
 was glad of the adversity that was making things so much 
 easier for him. His sulkiness melted away in spite of him ; 
 it was hard to be sulky, with Francie all to himself, pouring 
 out his tea and talking to him with an intimateness that was 
 just tipped with flirtation ;. in fact, as the moments slipped 
 by, and the thought gripped him that the next day would 
 find him alone at Rosemount, every instant of this last 
 afternoon in her society became unspeakably precious. 
 The &te-b-tete across the tea-table prolonged itself so en- 
 grossingly that Lambert forgot his wonted punctuality, and 
 their attempt to catch the five o'clock train for Bray re- 
 sulted in bringing them breathless to the station as their 
 train steamed out of it. 
 
The Real Charlotte. 285 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 THE Irish mail-boat was well up to time on that frosty 
 thirty-first of December. She had crossed from Holyhead 
 on an even keel, and when the Bailey light on the end of 
 Howth had been sighted, the passengers began to think 
 that they might risk congratulations on the clemency of the 
 weather, and some of the hardier had ordered tea in the 
 saloon, and were drinking it with incredulous enjoyment. 
 
 " I shall go mad, Pamela, perfectly mad, if you cannot 
 think of any word for that tenth light. C and H can't 
 you think of anything with C and H ? I found out all the 
 others in the train, and the least you might do is to think 
 of this one for me. That dreadful woman snoring on the 
 sofa just outside my berth put everything else out of my 
 head." 
 
 This plaint, uttered in a deep and lamentable contralto, 
 naturally drew some attention towards Lady Dysart, as she 
 swept down the saloon towards the end of the table, and 
 Pamela, becoming aware that the lady referred to was 
 among the audience, trod upon her mother's dress and thus 
 temporarily turned the conversation. 
 
 " C and H," she repeated, " I'm afraid I can't think of 
 anything ; the only word I can think of beginning with C is 
 Christopher." 
 
 "Christopher!" cried Lady Dysart, "why, Christopher 
 ends with an R." 
 
 As Lady Dysart for the second time pronounced her 
 son's name the young man who had just come below, and 
 was having a whisky and soda at the bar at the end of the 
 saloon, turned quickly round and put down his glass. Lady 
 Dysart and her daughter were sitting with their backs to 
 him, but Mr. Hawkins did not require a second glance, and 
 made his way to them at once. 
 
 " And so you've been seeing poor Christopher off to the 
 North Pole," he said, after the first surprise and explana- 
 tions had been got over. " I can't say I envy him. They 
 make it quite cold enough in Yorkshire to suit me." 
 
 " Don't they ever make it hot for you there ? " asked 
 Lady Dysart, unable to resist the chance of poking fun at 
 
286 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 Mr. Hawkins, even though in so doing she violated her own 
 cherished regulations on the subject of slang. All her old 
 partiality for him had revived since Francie's departure from 
 Lismoyle, and she found the idea of his engagement far 
 more amusing than he did. 
 
 " No, Lady Dysart, they never do," said Hawkins, getting 
 very red, and feebly trying to rise to the occasion ; " they're 
 always very nice and kind to me." 
 
 " Oh, I daresay they are ! " replied Lady Dysart archly, 
 with a glance at Pamela like that of a naughty child who 
 glories in its naughtiness. " And is it fair to ask when the 
 wedding is to come off? We heard something about the 
 spring ! " 
 
 "Who gave you that interesting piece of news?" said 
 Hawkins, trying not to look foolish. 
 
 u A bridesmaid," said Lady Dysart, closing her lips 
 tightly, and leaning back with an irrepressible gleam in her 
 eye. 
 
 " Well, she knows more than I do. All I know about it 
 is, that I believe the regiment goes to Aldershot in May, 
 and I suppose it will be some time after that." Mr. 
 Hawkins spoke with a singularly bad grace, and before 
 further comment could be made he turned to Pamela. " I 
 saw a good deal of Miss Hope-Drummond in the north," he 
 said, with an effort so obvious and so futile at turning the 
 conversation that Lady Dysart began to laugh. 
 
 " Why, she was the bridesmaid " she began incauti- 
 ously, when the slackening of the engines set her thoughts 
 flying from the subject in hand to settle in agony upon the 
 certainty that Doyle would forget to put her scent-bottle 
 into her dressing-bag, and then the whole party went up on 
 deck. 
 
 It was dark, and the revolving light on the end of the 
 east pier swung its red eye upon the steamer as she passed 
 within a few yards of it, churning a curving road towards 
 the double line of lamps that marked the jetty. The lights 
 of Kingstown mounted row upon row, like an embattled 
 army of stars, the great sweep of Dublin Bay was pricked 
 out in lessening yellow points, and a new moon that looked 
 pale green by contrast, sent an immature shaft along the sea 
 in meek assertion of her presence. The paddles dropped 
 
The Real Charlotte. 287 
 
 their blades more and more languidly into the water, then 
 they ceased, and the vessel slid silently alongside the jetty, 
 with the sentient ease of a living thing. The warps were 
 flung ashore, the gangways thrust on board, and in an 
 instant the sailors were running ashore with the mail bags 
 on their backs, like a string of ants with their eggs. The 
 usual crowd of loafers and people who had come to meet 
 their friends formed round the passengers' gangway, and the 
 passengers filed down it in the brief and uncoveted dis- 
 tinction that the exit from a steamer affords. 
 
 Lady Dysart headed her party as they left the steamer, 
 and her imposing figure in her fur-lined cloak so filled the 
 gangway that Pamela could not, at first, see who it was that 
 met her mother as she stepped on to the platform. The 
 next moment she found herself shaking hands with Mr. 
 Lambert, and then, to her unbounded astonishment, with 
 Miss Fitzpatrick. The lamps were throwing strong light 
 and shadow upon Francie's face, and Pamela's first thought 
 was how much thinner she had become. 
 
 "Mr. Lambert and I missed our train back to Bray," 
 Francie began at once in a hurried deprecating voice, " and 
 we came down to see the boat come in just to pass the 
 time " Her voice stopped as if she had suddenly gasped 
 for breath, and Pamela heard Hawkins' voice say behind 
 her: 
 
 " How de do, Miss Fitzpatrick ? Who'd have thought of 
 meetin' you here ? " in a tone of cheerfully casual acquaint- 
 anceship. 
 
 Even Pamela, with all her imaginative sympathy, did not 
 guess what Francie felt in that sick and flinching moment, 
 when everything rung and tingled round her as if she had 
 been struck ; the red had deserted her cheek like a cowardly 
 defender, and the ground felt uneven under her feet, but 
 the instinct of self-control that is born of habit and con- 
 vention in the feeblest of us came mechanically to her 
 help. 
 
 " And I never thought I'd see you either," she answered, 
 in the same tone ; " I suppose you're all going to Lismoyle 
 together, Miss Dysart ? " 
 
 " No, we stay in Dublin to-night," said Pamela, with 
 sufficient consciousness of the situation to wish to shorten 
 
288 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 it. " Oh, thank you, Mr. Hawkins, I should be very glad 
 if you would put these rugs in the carriage." 
 
 Hawkins disappeared with the rugs in the wake of Lady 
 Dysart, and Lambert and Pamela and Francie followed 
 slowly together in the same direction. Pamela was in the 
 difficult position of a person who is full of a sympathy that 
 it is wholly out of the question to express. 
 
 "I am so glad that we chanced to meet you here," she 
 said, " we have not heard anything of you for such a long 
 time." 
 
 The kindness in her voice had the effect of conveying to 
 Francie how much in need of kindness she was, and the 
 creeping smart of tears gathered under her eyelids. 
 
 " It's awfully kind of you to say so, Miss Dysart," she 
 said, with something in her voice that made even the 
 Dublin brogue pathetic \ " I didn't think anyone at Lismoyle 
 remembered me now." 
 
 " Oh, we don't forget people quite so quickly as that," 
 said Pamela, thinking that Mr. Hawkins must have behaved 
 worse than she had believed ; " I see this is our carriage. 
 Mamma, did you know that Miss Fitzpatrick was here ? " 
 
 Lady Dysart was already sitting in the carriage, her face 
 fully expressing the perturbation that she felt, as she counted 
 the parcels that Mr. Hawkins was bestowing in the netting. 
 
 " Oh yes," she said, with a visible effort to be polite, " I 
 saw her just now ; do get in, my dear, the thing may start 
 at any moment." 
 
 If her mind had room for anything beside the anxieties of 
 travelling, it was disapprobation of Francie and of the fact 
 that she was going about alone with Mr. Lambert, and the 
 result was an absence of geniality that added to Francie's 
 longing to get away as soon as possible. Lambert was now 
 talking to Pamela, blocking up the doorway of the carriage 
 as he stood on the step, and over his shoulder she could see 
 Hawkins, still with his back to her, and still apparently very 
 busy with the disposal of the dressing-bags and rugs. He 
 was not going to speak to her again, she thought, as she 
 stood a little back from the open door with the frosty air 
 nipping her through her thin jacket ; she was no more to 
 him than a stranger, she, who knew every turn of his head, 
 and the feeling of his yellow hair that the carriage lamp was 
 
The Real Charlotte. 289 
 
 shining upon. The very look of the first-class carriage 
 seemed to her, who had seldom, if ever, been in one, to em- 
 phasise the distance that there was between them. The 
 romance that always clung to him even in her angriest 
 thoughts, was slaughtered by this glimpse of him, like some 
 helpless atom of animal life by the passing heel of a school- 
 boy. There was no scaffold, with its final stupendous 
 moment, and incentive to heroism ; there was nothing but 
 an ignoble end in commonplace neglect. 
 
 The ticket-collector slammed the door of the next carriage, 
 and Francie stepped back still further to make way for 
 Lambert as he got off the step. She had turned her back 
 on the train, and was looking vacantly at the dark outlines 
 of the steamer when she became aware that Hawkins was 
 beside her. 
 
 " Er good-bye " he said awkwardly, " the train's just 
 off." 
 
 "Good-bye," replied Francie, in a voice that sounded 
 strangely to her, it was so everyday and conventional. 
 
 " Look here," he said, looking very uncomfortable, and 
 speaking quickly, "I know you're angry with me. I couldn't 
 help it. I tried to get out of it, but it it couldn't be done. 
 I'm awfully sorry about it " 
 
 If Francie had intended to reply to this address, it was 
 placed beyond her power to do so. The engine, which had 
 been hissing furiously for some minutes, now set up the 
 continuous ear-piercing shriek that precedes the departure 
 of the boat train, and the guard, hurrying along the platform, 
 signified to Hawkins in dumb show that he was to take his 
 seat. The whistle continued unrelentingly ; Hawkins put 
 out his hand, and Francie laid hers in it. She looked 
 straight at him for a second, and then, as she felt his fingers 
 close hard round her hand in dastardly assurance of friend- 
 ship if not affection, she pulled it away, and turned to 
 Lambert, laughing and putting her hands up to her ears to 
 show that she could hear nothing in the din. Hawkins 
 jumped into the carriage again, Pamela waved her hand at 
 the window, and Francie was left with Lambert on the plat- 
 form, looking at the red light on the back of the guard's van, 
 as the train wound out of sight into the tunnel. 
 
290 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 IT was a cold east-windy morning near the middle of 
 March, when the roads were white and dusty, and the 
 clouds were grey, and Miss Mullen, seated in her new 
 dining-room at Gurthnamuckla, was finishing her Saturday 
 balancing of accounts. Now that she had become a landed 
 proprietor, the process was more complicated than it used 
 to be. A dairy, pigs, and poultry cannot be managed and 
 made to pay without thought and trouble, and, as Charlotte 
 had every intention of making Gurthnamuckla pay, she 
 spared neither time nor account books, and was beginning 
 to be well satisfied with the result. She had laid out a good 
 deal of money on the house and farm, but she was going to 
 get a good return for it, or know the reason why ; and as no 
 tub of skim milk was given to the pigs, or barrow of turnips 
 to the cows, without her knowledge, the chances of success 
 seemed on her side. 
 
 She had just entered, on the page headed Receipts, the sale 
 of two pigs at the fair, and surveyed the growing amount, 
 in its neat figures with complacency ; then, laying down her 
 pen, she went to the window, and directed a sharp eye at the 
 two men who were spreading gravel on the reclaimed avenue, 
 and straightening the edges of the grass. 
 
 " 'Pon my word, it's beginning to look like a gentleman's 
 avenue," she said to herself, eyeing approvingly the arch of 
 the elm tree branches, and the clumps of yellow daffodils, 
 the only spots of light in the colourless landscape, while the 
 cawing of the building rooks had a pleasant manorial sound 
 in her ears. A young horse came galloping across the lawn, 
 with floating mane and tail, and an intention to jump the 
 new wooden railings that only failed him at the last moment, 
 and resulted in two soapy slides in the grass, that Charlotte 
 viewed from her window with wonderful equanimity. " I'll 
 give Roddy a fine blowing up when he comes over," she 
 thought, as she watched the colt cutting capers among the 
 daffodils; "I'll ask him it he'd like me to have his four 
 precious colts in to tea. He's as bad about them as I am 
 about the cats ! ' Miss Mullen's expression denoted that 
 the reproof would not be of the character to which Louisa 
 
The Real Charhtte. 291 
 
 was accustomed, and Mrs. Bruff, who had followed her 
 mistress into the window, sprang on a chair, and arching 
 her back, leaned against the well-known black alpaca apron 
 with a feeling that the occasion was exceptionally propitious. 
 The movements of Charlotte's character, for it cannot be 
 said to possess the power of development, were akin to those 
 of some amphibious thing, whose strong, darting course 
 under the water is only marked by a bubble or two, and it 
 required almost an animal instinct to note them. Every 
 bubble betrayed the creature below, as well as the limita- 
 tions of its power of hiding itself, but people never thought 
 of looking out for these indications in Charlotte, or even 
 suspected that she had anything to conceal. There was an 
 almost blatant simplicity about her, a humorous rough and 
 readiness which, joined with her literary culture, proved 
 business capacity, and her dreaded temper seemed to leave no 
 room for any further aspect, least of all of a romantic kind. 
 Having opened the window for a minute to scream 
 abusive directions to the men who were spreading gravel, 
 she went back to the table, and, gathering her account- 
 books together, she locked them up in her davenport. The 
 room that, in Julia Duffy's time, had been devoted to the 
 storage of potatoes, was now beginning life again, dressed 
 in the faded attire of the Tally Ho dining-room. Charlotte's 
 books lined one of its newly-papered walls ; the fox-hunting 
 prints that dated from old Mr. Butler's reign at Tally Ho 
 hung above the chimney-piece, and the maroon rep curtains 
 were those at which Francie had stared during her last and 
 most terrific encounter with their owner. The ai* of occu- 
 pation was completed by a basket on the rug in front of the 
 fire with four squeaking kittens in it, and by the Bible and 
 the grey manual of devotion out of which Charlotte read 
 daily prayers to Louisa the orphan and the cats. It was an 
 ugly room, and nothing could ever make it anything else, 
 but with the aid of the brass- mounted grate, a few bits of 
 Mrs. Mullen's silver on the sideboard, and the deep-set 
 windows, it had an air of respectability and even dignity 
 that appealed very strongly to Charlotte. She enjoyed 
 every detail of her new possessions, and unlike Norry and 
 the cats, felt no regret for the urban charms and old 
 associations of Tally Ho. Indeed, since her aunt's death, 
 
292 The Real Charlotte 
 
 she had never liked Tally Ho. There was a strain of 
 superstition in her that, like her love of land, showed 
 how strongly the blood of the Irish peasant ran in her veins; 
 since she had turned Francie out of the house she had 
 not liked to think of the empty room facing her own, in 
 which Mrs. Mullen's feeble voice had laid upon her the 
 charge that she had not kept ; her dealings with table-turning 
 and spirit-writing had expanded for her the boundaries of the 
 possible, and made her the more accessible to terror of the 
 supernatural. Here, at Gurthnamuckla, there was nothing 
 to harbour these suggestions ; no brooding evergreens rust- 
 ling outside her bedroom window, no rooms alive with the 
 little incidents of a past life, no doors whose opening and 
 shutting were like familiar voices reminding her of the foot- 
 steps that they had once heralded. This new house was 
 peopled only by the pleasant phantoms of a future that she 
 had fashioned for herself out of the slightest and vulgarest 
 materials, and her wakeful nights were spent in schemings 
 in which the romantic and the practical were logically 
 blended. 
 
 Norry the Boat did not, as has been hinted, share hei 
 mistress's satisfaction in Gurthnamuckla. For four months 
 she had reigned in its kitchen, and it found no more favour 
 in her eyes than on the day when she, with her roasting-jack 
 in one hand and the cockatoo's cage in the other, had made 
 her official entry into it. It was not so much the new 
 range, or the barren tidyness of the freshly-painted cup- 
 boards ; these things had doubtless been at first very 
 distressing. But time had stored the cupboards with the 
 miscellanies that Norry loved to hoard, and Bid Sal had 
 imparted a home-like feeling to the range by wrenching the 
 hinge of the oven-door so that it had to be kept closed with 
 the poker. Even the unpleasantly dazzling whitewash was 
 now turning a comfortable yellow brown, and the cobwebs 
 were growing about the hooks in the ceiling. But none of 
 these things thoroughly consoled Norry. Her complaints, 
 it is true, did not seem adequate to account for her general 
 aspect of discontent. Miss Mullen heard daily lamentations 
 over the ravages committed by Mr. Lambert's young horses 
 on the clothes bleaching on the furze-bushes, the loss of 
 "the clever little shcullery that we had in Tally Ho," and 
 
The Real Charlotte. 
 
 the fact that "if a pairson was on his dying bed for the 
 want of a grain o' tay itself, he should thravel three miles 
 before he'd get it," but the true grievance remained locked 
 in Norry's bosom. Not to save her life would she have 
 admitted that what was really lacking in Gurthnamuckla was 
 society. The messengers from the shops, the pedlar-woman; 
 above all, the beggars ; of these she had been deprived at a 
 blow, and life had become a lean ill-nurtured thing without 
 the news with which they had daily provided her. Billy 
 Grainy and Nance the Fool were all that remained to her 
 of this choice company, the former having been retained in 
 his offices of milk-seller, messenger, and post-boy, and the 
 latter, like Abdiel, faithful among the faithless, was unde- 
 terred by the distance that had discouraged the others of 
 her craft, and limped once a week to Gurthnamuckla for the 
 sake of old times and a mug of dripping. 
 
 By these inadequate channels a tardy rill of news made 
 its way to Miss Mullen's country seat, but it came poisoned 
 by the feeling that every one else in Lismoyle had known it 
 for at least a week, and Norry felt herself as much aggrieved 
 as if she had been charged " pence apiece " for stale eggs. 
 
 It was therefore the more agreeable that, on this same 
 raw, grey Saturday morning, when Norry's temper had been 
 unusually tried by a search for the nest of an out-lying hen, 
 Mary Holloran, the Rosemount lodgewoman, should have 
 walked into the kitchen. 
 
 " God save all here ! " she said, sinking on to a chair, 
 and wiping away with her apron the tears that the east wind 
 had brought to her eyes ; " I'm as tired as if I was afther 
 walking from Galway with a bag o' male ! " 
 
 " Musha, then, cead failthe, Mary," replied Norry with 
 unusual geniality ; " is it from Judy Lee's wake ye're 
 comin' ? " 
 
 " I am, in throth ; Lord ha' mercy on her ! " Mary 
 Holloran raised her eyes to the ceiling and crossed herself, 
 and Norry and Bid Sal followed her example. Norry was 
 sitting by the fire singeing the yellow carcase of a hen, and 
 the brand of burning paper in her hand heightened the 
 effect of the gesture in an almost startling way. " Well 
 now," resumed Mary Holloran, " she was as nice a woman 
 as ever threw a tub of clothes on the hill, and an honest 
 
294 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 poor craythure through all. She battled it out well, as owld 
 as she was." 
 
 " Faith thin, an' if she did die itself she was in the want 
 of it," said Norry sardonically; "sure there isn't a winther 
 since her daughther wint to America that she wasn't 
 anointed a couple of times. I'm thinking the people th' 
 other side o' death will be throuncin' her for keepin' them 
 waitin' on her this way ! " 
 
 Mary Holloran laughed a little and then wiped her face 
 with the corner of her apron, and sighed so as to restore a 
 fitting tone to the conversation. 
 
 " The neighbours was all gethered in it last night," she 
 observed ; " they had the two rooms full in it, an' a half 
 gallon of whisky, and portlier and all sorts. Indeed, her 
 sisther's two daughthers showed her every respect; there 
 wasn't one comin' in it, big nor little, but they'd fill them 
 out a glass o' punch before they'd sit down. God bless ye, 
 Bid Sal," she went on, as if made thirsty by the recollection; 
 " have ye a sup o' tay in that taypot that's on th' oven ? I'd 
 drink the lough this minute ! " 
 
 " Is it the like o' that ye'd give the woman ? " vociferated 
 Norry in furious hospitality, as Bid Sal moved forward to 
 obey this behest ; " make down the fire and bile a dhrop of 
 wather the way she'll get what'll not give her a sick 
 shtummuck. Sure, what's in that pot's the lavin's afther 
 Miss Charlotte's breakfast for Billy Grainy when he comes 
 with the post ; and good enough for the likes of him." 
 
 "There was a good manny axing for ye last night," 
 began Mary Holloran again, while Bid Sal broke up a box 
 with the kitchen cleaver, and revived the fire with its frag- 
 ments and a little paraffin oil. " And you a near cousin o 1 
 the corp'. Was it herself wouldn't let you in it ? " 
 
 " Whether she'd let me in it or no I have plenty to do 
 besides running to every corp'-house in the counthry," re- 
 turned Norry with an acerbity that showed how accurate 
 Mary Holloran's surmise had been ; " if thim that was in 
 the wake seen me last night goin' out to the cow that's 
 afther calvin' with the quilt off me bed to put over her, 
 maybe they'd have less chat about me." 
 
 Mary Holloran was of a pacific turn, and she tried 
 another topic. " Did ye hear that John Kenealy was 
 
The Real Charlotte. 295 
 
 afther summonsing me mother before the Binch ?" she said, 
 unfastening her heavy blue cloak and putting her feet up on 
 the fender of the range. 
 
 "Ah, God help ye, how would I hear annyth ; r; r "> ' 
 grumbled Norry ; " it'd be as good for me to be in he ^ 
 as to be here, with ne'er a one but Nance the Fool COUH 
 next or nigh me." 
 
 " Oh, indeed, that's the thruth," said Mary Holloran with 
 polite but transient sympathy. "Well, whether or no, he 
 summonsed her, and all the raison he had for putting that 
 scandal on her, was thim few little hins and ducks she have, 
 that he seen different times on his land, themselves and an 
 owld goat thravellin' the fields, and not a bit nor a bite be- 
 fore them in it that they'd stoop their heads to, only what 
 sign of grass was left afther the winther, and faith 1 that's 
 little. 'Twas last Tuesday, Lady- Day an' all, me mother 
 was bringin' in a goaleen o' turf, an' he came thundherin' 
 round the house, and every big rock of English he had he 
 called it to her, and every soort of liar and blagyard oh, 
 indeed, his conduck was not fit to tell to a jackass an' he 
 summonsed her secondly afther that. Ye'd think me 
 mother'd lose her life when she seen the summons, an' 
 away she legged it into Rosemount to meself, the way I'd 
 spake to the masther to lane heavy on Kenealy the day he'd 
 bring her into coort. * An' indeed,' says I to the masther, 
 ' is it to bring me mother into coort ! ' says I ; ' sure she's 
 hardly able to lave the bed,' says I, * an owld little woman 
 that's not four stone weight ! She's not that size,' says I " 
 Mary Holloran measured accurately off the upper joints of 
 her first two fingers M * Sure- ye'd blow her orTyer hand! 
 And Kenealy sayin' she pelted the pavement afther him, 
 and left a backward sthroke on him with the shovel ! ' says 
 I. But in any case the masther gave no satisfaction to 
 Kenealy, and he arbithrated him the way he wouldn't be let 
 bring me mother into coort, an' two shillin' she paid for 
 threspass, and thank God she's able to do that same, for as 
 desolate as Kenealy thinks her." 
 
 "Lambert's a fine arbithrator," said Norry, dispassion- 
 ately. " Here, Bid Sal, run away out to the lardher and 
 lave this within in it," handing over the singed hen, " and 
 afther that, go on out and cut cabbages for the pigs. Divil's 
 
296 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 cure to ye ! Can't ye make haste ! I suppose ye think it's 
 to be standin' lookin' at the people that ye get four pounds 
 a year an' yer dite ! Thim gerrls is able to put annyone 
 that'd be with them into a decay," she ended, as Bid Sal re- 
 luctantly withdrew, " and there's not a word ye'll say but 
 they'll gallop through the counthry tellin' it." Then, drop- 
 ping into a conversational tone, " Nance was sayin' Lambert 
 was gone to Dublin agin, but what signifies what the likes 
 of her'd say ; it couldn't be he'd be goin' in it agin and he 
 not home a week from it." 
 
 Mary Holloran pursed up her mouth portentously. 
 
 " Faith he could go in it, and it's in it he's gone," she said, 
 beginning upon a new cup of tea, as dark and sweet as 
 treacle, that Norry had prepared for her. " Ah, musha ! 
 Lord have mercy on thim that's gone \ 'tis short till they're 
 forgotten ! " 
 
 Norry contented herself with an acquiescing sound, 
 devoid of interrogation, but dreary enough to be encourag- 
 ing. Mrs. Holloran's saucer had received half the contents 
 of her cup, and was now delicately poised aloft on the out- 
 spread fingers of her right hand, while her right elbow 
 rested on the table according to the etiquette of her class, 
 and Norry knew that the string of her friend's tongue would 
 loosen of its own accord. 
 
 " Seven months last Monday," began Mary Holloran in 
 the voice of a professional recite^; " seven months since he 
 berrid her, an' if he gives three more in the widda ye may 
 call me a liar." 
 
 " Tell the truth ! " exclaimed Norry, startled out of her 
 self-repression and stopping short in the act of poking the 
 fire. " D'ye tell me it's to marry again he'd go, an' the first 
 wife's clothes on his cook this minit ? " 
 
 Mary Holloran did not reveal by look or word the grati- 
 fication that she felt " God forbid I'd rise talk or dhraw 
 scandal," she continued with the same pregnant calm, " but 
 the thruth it is an' no slandher, for the last month there's 
 not a week arrah what week no, but there's hardly the 
 day, but a letther goes to the post for for one you know 
 well, an' little boxeens and re/<tered envelopes an' all sorts. 
 An' letthers coming from that one to him to further ordhers ! 
 Sure I'd know the writin'. Hav'n't she her name written 
 
The Real Charlotte. 297 
 
 the size of I don't know what on her likeness that he have 
 shtuck out on the table." 
 
 Mary Holloran broke off like a number of a serial story, 
 with a carefully interrupted situation, and sipped her tea 
 assiduously. Norry advanced slowly from the fireplace with 
 the poker still clutched in her hand, and her glowing eyes 
 fixed upon her friend, as if she were stalking her. 
 
 " For the love o' God, woman ! " she whispered, " is it 
 Miss Francie ? " 
 
 " Now ye have it," said Mary Holloran. 
 
 Norry clasped her hands, poker and all, and raised them 
 in front of her face, while her eyes apparently communed 
 with a familiar spirit at the other end of the kitchen. They 
 puzzled Mary Holloran, who fancied she discerned in them 
 a wild and quite irrelevant amusement, but before further 
 opinions could be interchanged, a dragging step was heard 
 at the back door, a fumbling hand lifted the latch, and Billy 
 Grainy came in with the post-bag over his shoulder and an 
 empty milk-can in his hand. 
 
 " Musha, more power to ye, Billy ! " said Mary Holloran, 
 concealing her disgust at the interruption with laudable good 
 breeding, and making a grimace of lightning quickness at 
 Norry, expressive of the secrecy that was to be observed \ 
 " 'tis you're the grand post-boy ! " 
 
 " Och thin I am," mumbled Billy sarcastically, as he let 
 the post-bag slip from his shoulders to the table, " divil a 
 boot nor a leg is left on me with the thravelling ! " He 
 hobbled over to the fireplace, and, taking the teapot off the 
 the range, looked into it suspiciously. "This is a quare 
 time o' day for a man to be atin' his breakfast ! Divil dom 
 the bit I'd ate in this house agin' if it wasn't for the nathure 
 I have for the place " 
 
 Norry banged open a cupboard, and took from it a mug 
 with some milk in it, and a yellow pie-dish, in which were 
 several stale ends of loaves. 
 
 " Take it or lave it afther ye ! " she said, putting them 
 down on the table. " If ye had nathure for risin' airly out 
 o' yer bed the tay wouldn't be waitin' on ye this way, an' if 
 ourselves can't plaze ye, ye can go look for thim that will. 
 * Thim that's onaisy let thim quit I ' ' Norry cared little 
 whether Billy Grainy was too deaf to take in this retort or 
 
298 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 no. Mary Holloran and her own self-respect were alike 
 gratified, and taking up the post-bag she proceeded with it 
 to the dining-room. 
 
 "Well, Norry," said Charlotte jocularly, looking round 
 from the bookshelf that she was tidying, "is it only now that 
 old thief s brought the post ? or have ye been flirting with 
 him in the kitchen all this time ? " 
 
 Norry retired from the room with a snarl of indescribable 
 scorn, and Charlotte unlocked the bag and drew forth its 
 contents. There were three letters for her, and she laid one 
 of them aside at once while she read the other two. One 
 was from a resident in Ferry Lane, an epistle that began 
 startlingly, " Honored Madman," and slanted over two sides 
 of the note-paper in lamentable entreaties for a reduction of 
 the rent and a little more time to pay it in. The other was 
 an invitation from Mrs. Corkran to meet a missionary, and 
 tossing both down with an equal contempt, she addressed 
 herself to the remaining one. She was in the act of opening 
 it when she caught sight of the printed name of a hotel upon 
 its flap, and she suddenly became motionless, her eyes star- 
 ing at the name, and her face slowly reddening all over. 
 
 "Bray!" she said between her teeth, "what takes him 
 to Bray, when he told me to write to him to the Shel- 
 bourne ? " 
 
 She opened the letter, a long and very neatly written one, 
 so neat, in fact, as to give to a person who knew Mr. 
 Lambert's handwriting in all its phases the idea of very un- 
 usual care and a rough copy. 
 
 "My dear Charlotte," it began, "I know you will be 
 surprised at the news I have to tell you in this letter, and 
 so will many others ; indeed I am almost surprised at it my- 
 self." Charlotte's left hand groped backwards till it caught 
 the back of a chair and held on to it, but her eyes still flew 
 along the lines. " You are my oldest and best friend, and 
 so you are the first I would like to tell about it, and I would 
 value your good wishes far beyond any others that might be 
 offered to me, especially as I hope you will soon be my re- 
 lation as well as my friend. I am engaged to Francie Fitz- 
 patrick, and we are to be married as soon as possible." 
 
 The reader sat heavily down upon the chair behind her, 
 
The Real Charlotte. 299 
 
 her colour fading from red to a dirty yellow as she read on, 
 " I am aware that many will say that I am not showing proper 
 respect towards poor dear Lucy in doing this, but you, or any 
 one that knew her well, will support me in saying that I 
 never was wanting in that to her when she was alive, and 
 that she would be the last to wish I should live a lonely and 
 miserable life now that she is gone. It is a great pleasure to 
 me to think that she always had such a liking for Francie, for 
 her own sake as well as because she was your cousin. It was 
 my intention to have put off the marriage for a year, but I 
 heard a couple of days ago from Robert Fitzpatrick that the 
 investment that Francie's little fortune had been put into was 
 in a very shaky state, and that there is no present chance of 
 dividends from it. He offered to let her live with them as 
 usual, but they have not enough to support themselves. 
 Francie was half starved there, and it is no place for her to 
 be, and so we have arranged to be married very quietly down 
 here at Bray, on the twentieth just a week from to-day. I 
 will take her to London, or perhaps a little further for a week 
 or so, and about the first or second week in April I hope to 
 be back in Rosemount. I know, my dear Charlotte, my 
 dear old friend, that this must appear a sudden and hasty 
 step, but I have considered it well and thoroughly. I know 
 too that when Francie left your house there was some trifling 
 little quarrel between you, but I trust you will forget all 
 about that, and that you will be the first to welcome her 
 when she returns to her new home. She begs me to say 
 that she is sorry for anything she said to annoy you, and 
 would write to you if she thought you would like to hear 
 from her. I hope you will be as good a friend to her as you 
 have always been to me, and will be ready to help and ad- 
 vise her in her new position. I would be greatly obliged to 
 you if you would let the Lismoyle people know of my marri- 
 age, and of the reasons that I have told you for hurrying it 
 on this way ; you know yourself how glad they always are 
 to get hold of the wrong end of a story. I am going to 
 write to Lady Dysart myself. Now, my dear Charlotte, I 
 must close this letter. The above will be my address for a 
 week, and I will be very anxious to hear from you. With 
 much love from Francie and myself, I remain your attached 
 friend, RODERICK LAMBERT." 
 
300 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 A human soul, when it has broken away from its diviner 
 part and is left to the anarchy of the lower passions, is a 
 poor and humiliating spectacle, and it is unfortunate that in 
 its animal want of self-control it is seldom without a ludicrous 
 aspect. The weak side of Charlotte's nature was her ready 
 abandonment of herself to fury that was, as often as not, 
 wholly incompatible with its cause, and now that she had 
 been dealt the hardest blow that life could give her, there 
 were a few minutes in which rage, and hatred, and thwarted 
 passion took her in their fierce hands, and made her for the 
 time a wild beast. When she came to herself she was 
 standing by the chimney-piece, panting and trembling ; the 
 letter lay in pieces on the rug, torn by her teeth, and stamped 
 here and there with the semicircle of her heel ; a chair was 
 lying on its side on the floor, and Mrs. Bruff was crouching 
 aghast under the sideboard, looking out at her mistress with 
 terrified inquiry. 
 
 Charlotte raised her hand and drew it across her mouth 
 with the unsteadiness of a person in physical pain, then, 
 grasping the edge of the chimney-piece, she laid her fore- 
 head upon it and drew a few long shuddering breaths. It 
 is probable that if anyone had then come into the room, 
 the human presence, with its mysterious electric quality, 
 would have drawn the storm outwards in a burst of 
 hysterics ; but solitude seems to be a non-conductor, and a 
 parched sob, that was strangled in its birth by an impreca- 
 tion, was the only sound that escaped from her. As she 
 Ufted her head again her eyes met those of a large cabinet 
 photograph of Lambert that stared brilliantly at her with the 
 handsome fatuity conferred by an over-touched negative. 
 It was a recent one, taken during one of those visits 
 to Dublin whose object had been always so plausibly 
 explained to her, and, as she looked at it, the biting 
 thought of how she had been hoodwinked and fooled, 
 by a man to whom she had all her life laid down the law, 
 drove her half mad again. She plucked it out of its frame 
 with her strong fingers, and thrust it hard down into the 
 smouldering fire. 
 
 " If it was hell I'd do the same for you ! " she said, with 
 a moan like some furious feline creature, as she watched 
 the picture writhe in the heat, " and for her too ! " She 
 
The Real Charlotte. 301 
 
 took up the poker, and with it drove and battered the 
 photograph into the heart of the fire, and then, flinging 
 down the poker with a crash that made Louisa jump as she 
 crossed the hall, she sat down at the dinner-table and made 
 her first effort at self-control. 
 
 " His old friend ! " she said, gasping and choking over 
 the words ; "the cur, the double-dyed cur ! Lying and 
 cringing to me, and borrowing rny money, and and " 
 even to herself she could not now admit that he had gulled 
 her into believing that he would eventually marry her 
 " and sneaking after her behind my back all the time ! And 
 now he sends me her love her love ! Oh, my God 
 Almighty " she tried to laugh, but instead of laughter 
 came tears, as she saw herself helpless, and broken, and 
 aimless for the rest of her life " I won't break down I 
 won't break down " she said, grinding her teeth together 
 with the effort to repress her sobs. She staggered blindly 
 to the sideboard, and, unlocking it, took out a bottle of 
 brandy. She put the bottle to her mouth and took a long 
 gulp from it, while the tears ran down her face. 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 SOMETIMES there comes in Paris towards the beginning of 
 April a week or two of such weather as is rarely seen in 
 England before the end of May. The horse-chestnut buds 
 break in vivid green against the sober blue of the sky, there 
 is a warmth about the pavements that suggests the coming 
 blaze of summer, the gutter rivulets and the fountains 
 sparkle with an equal gaiety, and people begin to have their 
 coffee out of doors again. The spring, that on the day 
 Francie was married at Bray was still mainly indicated by 
 east wind and fresh mackerel, was burgeoning in the woods 
 at Versailles with a hundred delicate surprises of blossom 
 and leaf and thick white storm of buds, and tourists were 
 being forced, like asparagus, by the fine weather, and began 
 to appear in occasional twos and threes on the wide square 
 in front of the palace. A remnant of the winter quiet still 
 hung over everything, and a score or two of human beings, 
 dispersed through the endless rooms and gardens, only 
 
302 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 made more emphatic the greatness of the extent and of the 
 solitude. They .certainly did not bring much custom to 
 the little woman who had been beguiled by the fine weather 
 to set up her table of cakes and oranges in a sunny angle of 
 the palace wall, and sat by it all day, picturesque and 
 patient in her white cap, while her strip of embroidery 
 lengthened apace in the almost unbroken leisure. Even 
 the first Sunday of April, from which she had hoped great 
 things, brought her, during many bland and dazzling hours, 
 nothing except the purchase of a few sous worth of sweets, 
 and the afternoon was well advanced before she effected a 
 sale of any importance. A tall gentleman, evidently a 
 Monsieur Anglais, was wandering about, and she called to 
 him to tell him of the excellence of her brioches and the 
 beauty of her oranges. Ordinarily she had not found that 
 English gentlemen were attracted by her wares, but there 
 was something helpless about this one that gave her confi- 
 dence. He came up to her table and inspected its dainties 
 with bewildered disfavour, while a comfortable clink of 
 silver came from the pocket in which one hand was 
 fumbling. 
 
 " Pain d'e*pices ! Des gateaux ! Ver' goot, ver' sveet ! " 
 she said encouragingly, bringing forth her entire English 
 vocabulary with her most winning smile. 
 
 " I wish to goodness I knew what the beastly things are 
 made of," the Englishman murmured to himself. " I can't 
 go wrong with oranges anyhow. Er cela, et cela s'ils vous 
 plait," producing in his turn his whole stock of French, 
 "combieng." He had only indicated two oranges, but the 
 little woman had caught the anxious glance at her cakes, and 
 without more ado chose out six of the most highly-glazed 
 brioches, and by force of will and volubility made her cus- 
 tomer not only take them but pay her two francs for them 
 and the oranges. 
 
 The tall Englishman strode away round the corner of the 
 palace with these provisions, and along the great terrace 
 towards a solitary figure sitting forlornly at the top of one 
 of the flights of steps that drop in noble succession down to 
 the expanses of artificial water that seem to stretch away 
 into the heart of France. 
 
 " I couldn't find anywhere to get tea," he said as soon as 
 
The Real Charlotte, 303 
 
 he was within speaking distance ; " I couldn't find any- 
 thing but an old woman selling oranges, and I got you some 
 of those, and she made me get some cakes as well I don't 
 know if they're fit to eat." 
 
 Mr. Lambert spoke with a very unusual timorousness, as 
 he placed his sticky purchases in Francie's lap, and sat down 
 on the step beside her. 
 
 " Oh, thank you awfully, Roddy, I'm sure they're lovely," 
 she answered, looking at her husband with a smile that was 
 less spontaneous than it used to be, and looking away again 
 immediately. 
 
 There was something ineffably wearying to her in the 
 adoring, proprietary gaze that she found so unfailingly fixed 
 upon her whenever she turned her eyes towards him ; it 
 seemed to isolate her from other people and set her upon a 
 ridiculous pedestal, with one foolish worshipper declaiming 
 his devotion with the fervour and fatuity of those who for 
 two hours shouted the praises of Diana of the Ephesians. 
 The supernatural mist that blurs the irksome and the ludi- 
 crous till it seems like a glory was not before her eyes; 
 every outline was clear to her, with the painful distinctness 
 of a caricature. 
 
 " I don't think you could eat the oranges here," he said, 
 " they'd be down on us for throwing the skins about. Are 
 you too tired to come on down into the gardens where they 
 wouldn't spot us ? " He laid his hand on hers, " You are 
 tired. What fools we were to go walking round all those 
 infernal rooms ! Why didn't you say you had enough of 
 it?" 
 
 Francie was aching with fatigue from walking slowly over 
 leagues of polished floor, with her head thrown back in per- 
 petual perfunctory admiration of gilded ceilings and battle 
 pictures, but she got up at once, as much to escape from 
 the heavy warmth of his hand as from the mental languor 
 that made discussion an effort. They went together 
 down the steps, too much jaded by uncomprehended 
 sight-seeing to take heed of the supreme expression of 
 art in nature that stretched out before them in mirrors of 
 Triton and dolphin-guarded water and ordered masses of 
 woodland, and walked slowly along a terrace till they came 
 to another flight of steps that fell suddenly from the stately 
 
304 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 splendours of the terraces down to the simplicities of a path 
 leading into a grove of trees. 
 
 The path wound temptingly on into the wood, with prim- 
 roses and celandine growing cool and fresh in the young 
 grass on either side of it ; the shady greenness was like the 
 music of stringed instruments after the brazen heroics of a 
 military band. They loitered along, and Francie slipped 
 her hand into Lambert's arm, feeling, unconsciously, a little 
 more in sympathy with him, and more at ease with life. 
 She had never pretended either to him or to herself that she 
 was in love with him ; her engagement had been the inevit- 
 able result of poverty, and aimlessness, and bitterness of 
 soul, but her instinctive leniency towards any man who liked 
 her, joined with her old friendliness for Mr. Lambert, made 
 it as easy a way out of her difficulties as any she could have 
 chosen. There was something flattering in the knowledge 
 of hei power over a man whom she had been accustomed 
 to look up to, and something, too, that appealed incessantly 
 to her good nature ; besides which there is to nearly every 
 human being some comfort in being the first object of 
 another creature's life. She was almost fond of him as she 
 walked beside him, glad to rest her weight on his arm, and 
 to feel how big and reliable he was. There was nothing in 
 the least romantic about having married him, but it was 
 eminently creditable. Her friends in the north side of 
 Dublin had been immensely impressed by it, and she knew 
 enough of Lismoyle society to be aware that there also she 
 would be regarded with gratifying envy. She quite looked 
 forward to meeting Hawkins again, that she might treat him 
 with the cool and assured patronage proper to the heights 
 of her new position ; he had himself seared the wound that 
 he had given her, and now she felt that she was thankful to 
 him. 
 
 " Hang this path ! it has as many turns as a corkscrew/' 
 remarked Mr. Lambert, bending his head to avoid a down- 
 stretched branch of hawthorn, covered with baby leaves and 
 giant thorns. " I thought we'd have come to a seat long 
 before this ; if it was Stephen's Green there'd have been 
 twenty by this time." 
 
 " There would, and twenty old men sitting on each of 
 them ! " retorted Francie. " Mercy ! who's that hiding 
 
The Real Charlotte. 305 
 
 behind the tree? Oh, I declare, it's only one of those 
 everlasting old statues, and look at a lot more of them ! I 
 wonder if it was that they hadn't room enough for them 
 up in the house that they put them out here in the 
 woods ? " 
 
 They had come to an enclosed green space in the wood, 
 a daisy-starred oval of grass, holding the spring sunshine in 
 serene remoteness from all the outer world of terraces and 
 gardens, and made mysterious and poetical as a vale in Ida 
 by the strange pale presences that peopled every nook of an 
 ivy-grown crag at its further side. A clear pool reflected 
 them, but waveringly, because of the ripples caused by a 
 light drip from the overhanging rock ; the trees towered on 
 the encircling high ground and made a wall of silence round 
 the intenser silences of the statues as they leaned and 
 postured in a trance of suspended activity ; the only sound 
 was the monotone of the falling water, dropping with a 
 cloistered gravity in the melodious hollow of the cave. 
 
 " I'm not going to walk another foot," said Francie, 
 sitting down on the grass by the water's edge ; " here, give 
 me the oranges, Roddy, no one'll catch us eating them here, 
 and we can peg the skins at that old thing with its clothes 
 dropping off and the harp in its hand." 
 
 It was thus that Mrs. Lambert described an Apollo with 
 a lyre who was regarding them from the opposite rock with 
 classic preoccupation. Lambert lighted a cigar, and leaning 
 back on his elbow in the grass, watched Francie's progress 
 through her inelegant meal with the pride of the provider. 
 He looked at her half wonderingly, she was so lovely in his 
 eyes, and she was so incredibly his own ; he felt a sudden 
 insanity of tenderness for her that made his heart throb and 
 his cheek redden, and would have ennobled him to the 
 pitch of dying for her on the spot, had such an extrava- 
 gance been demanded of him. He longed to put his 
 arms round her, and tell her how dear, how adorable, how 
 entirely delightful she was, but he knew that she would 
 probably only laugh at him in that maddening way of hers, 
 or at all events, make him feel that she was far less 
 interested in the declaration than he was. He gave a quick 
 sigh, and stretching out his hand laid it on her shoulder as 
 if to assure himself of his ownership of her. 
 
 u 
 
306 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 " That dress fits you awfully well. I like you better in 
 that than in anything." 
 
 " Then I'd better take care and not get the juice on it," 
 Francie replied, with her mouth full of orange ; " lend me a 
 loan of your handkerchief." 
 
 Lambert removed a bundle of letters and a guide-book 
 from his pocket, and finally produced the handkerchief. 
 
 "Why, you've a letter there from Charlotte, haven't 
 you ? " said Francie, with more interest than she had yet 
 shown, " I didn't know you had heard again from her." 
 
 " Yes, I did," said Lambert, putting the letters back in 
 his pocket, " I wish to goodness we hadn't left our address 
 at the Charing Cross Hotel. People might let a man alone 
 when he's on his honeymoon." 
 
 " What did she say ? " inquired Francie lightly. " Is she 
 cross ? The other one she wrote was as sweet as syrup, and 
 ' Love to dear Francie ' and all." 
 
 " Oh, no, not a bit," said Mr. Lambert, who had been 
 secretly surprised and even slightly wounded by the fortitude 
 with which Miss Mullen had borne the intelligence of his 
 second marriage, " but she's complaining that my colts have 
 eaten her best white petticoat." 
 
 "You may give her one of my new ones," suggested 
 Francie. 
 
 " Oh yes, she'd like that, wouldn't she ? " said Lambert 
 with a chuckle ; " she's so fond of you, y'know ! " 
 
 " Oh, she's quite friendly with me now, though I know 
 you're dying to make out that she'll not forgive me for 
 marrying you," said Francie, flinging her last bit of orange- 
 peel at the Apollo ; " you're as proud as Punch about it. I 
 believe you'd have married her, only she wouldn't take 
 you!" 
 
 " Is that your opinion ! " said Mr. Lambert with a smile 
 that conveyed a magnanimous reticence as to the facts of 
 the case ; " you're beginning to be jealous, are you ? I 
 think I'd better leave you at home the day I go over to talk 
 the old girl into good humour about her petticoat ! " 
 
 In his heart Mr. Lambert was less comfortable than the 
 tone of his voice might have implied ; there had been in 
 the letter, in spite of its friendliness and singular absence of 
 feminine pique, an allusion to that three hundred pound* 
 
The Real Charlotte. 307 
 
 that circumstances had forced him to accept from her. 
 His honeymoon, and those new clothes that Francie had 
 bought in London, had run away with no end of money, 
 and it would be infernally inconvenient if Charlotte was 
 going, just at this time of all others, to come down on him 
 for money that he had never asked her for. He turned 
 these things over uncomfortably in his mind as he lay back 
 on the grass, looking up at Francie's profile, dark against 
 the soft blue of the sky ; and even while he took one of her 
 hands and drew it down to his lips he was saying to himself 
 that he had never yet failed to come round Charlotte when 
 he tried, and it would not be for want of trying if he failed 
 now. 
 
 The shadows of the trees began to stretch long fingers 
 across the grass of the Bosquet d'Apollon, and Lambert 
 looked at his watch and began to think of table d'hote at the 
 Louvre Hotel. Pleasant, paradisaically pleasant as it was 
 here in the sun, with Francie's hand in his, and one of his 
 best cigars in his mouth, he had come to the age at which 
 not even Paradise would be enjoyable without a regular 
 dinner hour. 
 
 Francie felt chilly and exhausted as they walked back 
 and climbed the innumerable flights of steps that lay be- 
 tween them and the Palace; she privately thought that 
 Versailles would be a horrible place to live in, and not 
 to be compared in any way to Bruff, but, at all events, it 
 would be a great thing to say she had been there, and she 
 could read up all the history part of it in the guide-book 
 when she got back to the hotel. They were to go up the 
 Eiffel tower the next day ; that would be some fun, anyhow, 
 and to the Hippodrome in the evening, and, though that 
 wouldn't be as good as Hengler's circus, the elephants and 
 horses and things wouldn't be talking French and expecting 
 her to answer them, like the housemaids and shopmen. It 
 was a rest to lean back in the narrow carriage with the pair 
 of starveling ponies, that rattled along with as much whip- 
 cracking and general pomp as if it were doing ten miles an 
 hour instead of four, and to watch the poplars and villas 
 pass by in placid succession, delightfully devoid of historical 
 interest. 
 
 It was getting dark when they reached Paris, and the 
 
308 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 breeze had become rough and cold. The lamps were shin- 
 ing among the trees on the Boulevards, and the red and 
 green eyes of the cabs and trams crossed and recrossed 
 each other like a tangle of fire-flies. The electric lights of 
 the Place du Louvre were at length in sight, lofty and pale, 
 like globes of imprisoned daylight above the mundane flare 
 of the gas, and Francie's eyes turned towards them with a 
 languid relief. Her old gift of living every moment of her 
 day seemed gone, and here, in this wonderful Paris, that 
 had so suddenly acquired a real instead of a merely geo- 
 graphical existence for her, the stream of foreign life was 
 passing by her, and leaving her face as uninterested and 
 wearied as it ever had been when she looked out of the 
 window at Albatross Villa at the messenger boys and bakers' 
 carts. The street was crowded, and the carriage made 
 slower and slower way through it, till it became finally 
 wedged in the centre of a block. Lambert stood up, and 
 entered upon a one-sided argument with the driver as to 
 how to get out, while Francie remained silent, and indiffer- 
 ent to the situation. A piano-organ at a little distance from 
 them was playing the Boulanger March, with the brilliancy 
 of its tribe, its unfaltering vigour dominating all other 
 sounds. It was a piece of music in which Francie had 
 herself a certain proficiency, and, shutting her eyes with a 
 pang of remembrance, she was back in the Tally Ho draw- 
 ing-room, strumming it on Charlotte's piano, while Mr. 
 Hawkins, holding the indignant Mrs. Bruff on his lap, 
 forced her unwilling paws to thump a bass. Now the 
 difficult part, in which she always broke down, was being 
 played ; he had pretended there that he was her music 
 teacher, and had counted out loud, and rapped her over 
 the knuckles with a tea-spoon, and gone on with all kinds 
 of nonsense. The carriage started forward again with a 
 jerk, and Lambert dropped back into his place beside her. 
 
 " Of all the aSses unhung these French fellows are the 
 biggest," he said fervently, " and that infernal organ bang- 
 ing away the whole time till I couldn't hear my own voice, 
 much less his jabber. Here we are at last, anyhow, and 
 you've got to get out before me." 
 
 The tears had sprung overwhelmingly to her eyes, and 
 she could not answer a word. She turned her back on her 
 
The Real Charlotte. 309 
 
 husband, and stepping out of the carriage she walked un- 
 steadily across the courtyard in the white glare of the 
 electric light, leaving the hotel servant, who had offered his 
 arm at the carriage door, to draw what conclusions seemed 
 good to him from the spectacle of her wet cheeks and 
 trembling lips. She made for the broad flight of steps, and 
 went blindly up them under the drooping fans of the palms, 
 into the reading-room on the first floor. The piano-organ 
 was still audible outside, reiterating to madness the tune 
 that had torn open her past, and she made a hard effort to 
 forget its associations and recover herself, catching up an 
 illustrated paper to hide her face from the people in the 
 room. It was a minute or two before Lambert followed 
 her. 
 
 " Here's a go ! " he said, coming towards her with a green 
 envelope in his hand, " here's a wire to say that Sir Benja- 
 min's dead, and they want me back at once." 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 THE morning after Lambert received the telegram announ- 
 cing Sir Benjamin's death, he despatched one to Miss Char- 
 lotte Mullen at Gurthnamuckla, in which he asked her to 
 notify his immediate return to his household at Rosemount. 
 He had always been in the habit of relying on her help in 
 small as well as great occasions, and now that he had had 
 that unexpectedly civil letter from her, he had turned to her 
 at once without giving the matter much consideration. It 
 was never safe to trust to a servant's interpretation of the 
 cramped language of a telegram, and moreover, in his self- 
 sufficient belief in his own knowledge of women, he thought 
 that it would flatter her and keep her in good humour if he 
 asked her to give directions to his household. He would have 
 been less confident of his own sagacity had he seen the set 
 of Miss Mullen's jaw as she read the message, and heard the 
 laugh which she permitted to herself as soon as Louisa had 
 left the room. 
 
 " It's a pity he didn't hire me to be his major-domo as 
 well as his steward and stud-groom ! " she said to herself, 
 
310 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 " and his financier into the bargain ! I declare I don't know 
 what he'd do without me ! " 
 
 The higher and more subtle side of Miss Mullen's nature 
 had exacted of the quivering savage that had been awakened 
 by Lambert's second marriage that the answer to his letter 
 should be of a conventional and non-committing kind ; and 
 so, when her brain was still on fire with hatred and invective, 
 her facile pen glided pleasantly over the paper in stale feli- 
 citations and stereotyped badinage. It is hard to ask pity 
 for Charlotte, whose many evil qualities have without pity 
 been set down, but the seal of ignoble tragedy had been set 
 on her life ; she had not asked for love, but it had come to 
 her, twisted to burlesque by the malign hand of fate. There 
 is pathos as well as humiliation in the thought that such a 
 thing as a soul can be stunted by the trivialities of personal 
 appearance, and it 1s a fact not beyond the reach of sym- 
 pathy that each time Charlotte stood before her glass her 
 ugliness spoke to her of failure, and goaded her to revenge. 
 
 It was a wet morning, but at half-past eleven o'clock the 
 black horse was put into the phaeton, and Miss Mullen, 
 attired in a shabby mackintosh, set out on her mission to 
 Rosemount. A cold north wind drove the rain in her face 
 as she flogged the old horse along through the shelterless 
 desolation of rock and scrub, and in spite of her mackin- 
 tosh she felt wet and chilled by the time she reached Rose- 
 mount yard. She went into the kitchen by the back door, 
 and delivered her message to Eliza Hackett, whom she 
 found sitting in elegant leisure, retrimming a bonnet that 
 had belonged to the late Mrs. Lambert. 
 
 11 And is it the day after to-morrow, Miss, please ? " de- 
 manded Eliza Hackett with cold resignation. 
 
 " It is, me poor woman, it is," replied Charlotte, in the 
 tone of facetious intimacy that she reserved for other people's 
 servants. " You'll have to stir your stumps to get the house 
 ready for them." 
 
 " The house is cleaned down and ready for them as soon 
 as they like to walk into it," replied Eliza Hackett with 
 dignity, " and if the new lady faults the drawing-room chim- 
 bley for not being swep, the master will know it's not me 
 that's to blame for it, but the sweep that's gone dhrilling 
 with the Mileetia." 
 
The Real Charlotte. 311 
 
 " Oh, she's not the one to find fault with a man for being 
 a soldier any more than yourself, Eliza ! " said Charlotte, 
 who had pulled off her wet gloves and was warming her 
 hands. " Ugh ! How cold it is ! Is there any place up- 
 stairs where I could sit while you were drying my things for 
 me?" 
 
 The thought had occurred to her that it would not be 
 uninteresting to look round the house, and as it transpired 
 that fires were burning in the dining-room and in Mr. Lam- 
 bert's study she left her wet cloak and hat in the kitchen 
 and ascended to the upper regions. She glanced into the 
 drawing-room as she passed its open door, and saw the blue 
 rep chairs ranged in a solemn circle, gazing with all their 
 button eyes at a three-legged table in the centre of the 
 room; the blinds were drawn down, and the piano was 
 covered with a sheet ; it was altogether as inexpressive of 
 everything, except bad taste, as was possible. Charlotte 
 passed on to the dining-room and stationed herself in front 
 of an indifferent fire there, standing with her back to the 
 chimney-piece and her eyes roving about in search of enter- 
 tainment. Nothing was changed, except that the poor 
 turkey-hen's medicine bottles and pill boxes no longer lurked 
 behind the chimney-piece ornaments ; the bare dinner-table 
 suggested only how soon Francie would be seated at its 
 head, and Charlotte presently prowled on to Mr. Lambert's 
 study at the end of the passage, to look for a better fire, and 
 a room less barren of incident. 
 
 The study grate did not fail of its reputation of being the 
 best in the house, and Mr. Lambert's chair stood by the 
 hearthrug in wide-armed invitation to the visitor. Charlotte 
 sat down in it and slowly warmed one foot after the other, 
 while the pain rose hot and unconquerable in her heart. 
 The whole room was so gallingly familiar, so inseparably 
 connected with the time when she had still a future, vague 
 and improbable as it was, and could live in sufficient con- 
 tent on its slight sustenance. Another future had now to 
 be constructed, she had already traced out some lines of it, 
 and in the perfecting of these she would henceforward find 
 the cure for what she was now suffering. She roused her- 
 self, and glancing towards the table saw that on it lay a heap 
 of unopened newspapers and letters; she got up with 
 
312 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 alacrity, and addressed herself to the congenial task of ex* 
 amining each letter in succession. 
 
 " H'm ! They're of a very bilious complexion," she said 
 to herself. "There's one from Langford/' turning it over 
 and looking at the name on the back. " I wonder if he's 
 ordering a Victoria for her ladyship ? I wouldn't put it past 
 him. Perhaps he'd like me to tell her whose money it was 
 paid Langford's bill last year ! " 
 
 She fingered the letter longingly, then, taking a hairpin 
 from the heavy coils of her hair, she inserted it under the 
 flap of the envelope. Under her skilful manipulation it 
 opened easily, and without tearing, and she took out its 
 contents. They consisted of a short but severe letter from 
 the head of the firm, asking for " a speedy settlement of 
 this account, now so long overdue," and of the account in 
 question. It was a bill of formidable amount, from which 
 Charlotte soon gathered the fact that twenty pounds only 
 of the money she had lent Lambert last May had found its 
 way into the pockets of the coachbuilder. She replaced 
 the bill and letter in the envelope, and, after a minute of 
 consideration, took up for the second time two large and 
 heavy letters that she had thrown aside when first looking 
 through the heap. They had the stamp of the Lismoyle 
 bank upon them, and obviously contained bank - books. 
 Charlotte saw at a glance that the hairpin would be of no 
 avail with these envelopes, and after another pause for 
 deliberation she replaced all the letters in their original 
 position, and went down the passage to the top of the 
 kitchen stairs. 
 
 " Eliza," she called out, " have ye a kettle boiling down 
 there ? Ah, that's right " as Eliza answered in the affirma- 
 tive. " I never knew a well kept kitchen yet without boiling 
 water in it ! I'm chilled to me bones, Eliza," she continued, 
 " I wonder could you put your hand on a drop of spirits 
 anywhere, and I'd ask ye for a drop of hot grog to keep the 
 life in me, and " as Eliza started with hospitable speed in 
 search of the materials, " let me mix it meself, like a good 
 woman ; I know very well I'd be in the lock-up before night 
 if I drank what you'd brew for me ! " 
 
 Retiring on this jest, Miss Mullen returned to the study, 
 
The Real Charlotte. 313 
 
 and was sitting over the fire with a newspaper when the 
 refreshment she had asked for was brought in. 
 
 " I cut ye a sandwich to eat with it, Miss," said Eliza 
 Hackett, on whom Charlotte's generosity in the matter of 
 Mrs. Lambert's clothing had not been thrown away ; " I 
 know meself that as much as the smell itself o' sperrits 
 would curdle under me nose, takin' them on an empty 
 stomach. Though, indeed, if ye walked Lismoyle ye'd get 
 no better brandy than what's in that little bottle. Tis out 
 o' the poor mistress's medicine chest I got it. Well, well, 
 she's where she won't want brandy now ! " 
 
 Eliza withdrew with a well-ordered sigh, that, as Charlotte 
 knew, was expressive of future as well as past regret, and 
 Mr. Lambert's "oldest friend" was left in sole possession 
 of his study. She first proceeded to mix herself a tumbler 
 of brandy and water, and then she lifted the lid of the brass 
 punch kettle, and taking one of the envelopes that contained 
 the bank-books, she held it in the steam till the gum of the 
 flap melted. The book in it was Lambert's private banking 
 account, and Charlotte studied it for some time with greedy 
 interest, comparing the amounts of the drafts and cash 
 payments with the dates against each. Then she opened 
 the other envelope, keeping a newspaper ready at hand to 
 throw over the books in case of interruption, and found, as 
 she had anticipated, that it was the bank-book of the Dysart 
 estate. After this she settled down to hard work for half an 
 hour, comparing one book with another, making lists of 
 figures, sipping her brandy and water meanwhile, and 
 munching Eliza Hackett's sandwiches. Having learned 
 what she could of the bank-books, she fastened them up in 
 their envelopes, and, again having recourse to the kettle that 
 was simmering on the hob, she made, with slow, unslaked 
 avidity, an examination of some of the other letters on the 
 table. When everything was tidy again she leaned back in 
 the chair, and remained in deep meditation over her paper ( 
 of figures, until the dining-room clojftk sent a muffled re- I C 
 minder through the wall that it was two o'clock. 
 
 Ferry Row had, since Charlotte's change of residence, 
 breathed a freer air. Even her heavy washing was now 
 done at home, and her visits to her tenantry might be looked 
 forward to only when rents were known to be due. There 
 
314 The Rtal Charlotte. 
 
 was nothing that they expected less than that, on this wet 
 afternoon, so soon, too, after a satisfactory quarter-day, they 
 should hear the well-known rattle of the old phaeton, and 
 see Miss Mullen, in her equally well-known hat and water- 
 proof, driving slowly past house after house, Until she arrived 
 at the disreputable abode of Dinny Lydon the tailor. Hav- 
 ing turned the cushions of the phaeton upside down to keep 
 them dry, Miss Mullen knocked at the door, and was ad- 
 mitted by Mrs. Lydon, a very dirty woman, with a half- 
 finished waistcoat over her arm. 
 
 " Oh, ye're welcome, Miss Mullen, ye're welcome ! Come 
 in out o' the rain, asthore," she said, with a manner as 
 greasy as her face. " Himself have the coat waitin' on ye 
 these three days to thry on." 
 
 " Then Fm afraid the change for death must be on Dinny 
 if he's beginning to keep his promises," replied Charlotte, 
 adventuring herself fearlessly into the dark interior. " I'd 
 be thrown out in all me calculations, Dinny, if ye give up 
 telling me lies." 
 
 This was addressed through a reeking fog of tobacco 
 smoke to a half-deformed figure seated on a table by the 
 window. 
 
 " Oh, with the help o* God I'll tell yer honour a few lies 
 yet before I die," replied Dinny Lydon, removing his pipe 
 and the hat which, for reasons best known to himself, 
 he wore while at work, and turning on Charlotte a face 
 that, no less than his name, told of Spanish, if not Jewish 
 blood. 
 
 " Well, that's the truth, anyway," said Charlotte, with a 
 friendly laugh ; " but I won't believe in the coat being 
 ready till I see it. Didn't ye lose your apprentice since I 
 saw ye ? " 
 
 " Is it that young gobsther ? " rejoined Mrs. Lydon 
 acridly, as she tendered her unsavoury assistance to Char- 
 lotte in the removal of her waterproof; "if that one was in 
 the house yer coat wouldn't be finished in a twelvemonth 
 with all the time Dinny lost cursing him. Faith ! it was 
 last week he hysted his sails and away with him. Mind ye, 
 'twas he was the first-class puppy ! " 
 
 " Was it the trade he didn't like ? " asked Charlotte ; " or 
 was it the skelpings he got from Dinny ? " 
 
The Real Charlotte. 315 
 
 " Throth, it was not, but two plates in the sate of his 
 breeches was what he faulted, and the divil mend him ! " 
 
 " Two plates ! " exclaimed Charlotte, in not unnatural 
 bewilderment ; " what in the name of fortune was he doing 
 with them ? " 
 
 " Well, indeed, Miss Mullen, with respex t'ye, when he 
 came here he hadn't as much rags on him as'd wipe a 
 candlestick," replied Mrs. Lydon, with fluent spitefulness ; 
 " yerself knows that ourselves has to be losing with puttin' 
 clothes on thim apprentices, an' feedin' them as lavish and 
 as natty as ye'd feed a young bonnuf, an' afther all they'd 
 turn about an' say they never got so much as the wettin' of 
 their mouths of male nor tay nor praties " Mrs. Lydon 
 replenished her lungs with a long breath, " and this lad 
 the biggest dandy of them all, that wouldn't be contint with- 
 out Dinny'd cut the brea'th of two fingers out of a lovely 
 throusers that was a little sign bulky on him and was 
 gethered into nate plates " 
 
 " Oh, it's well known beggars can't bear heat," said Char- 
 lotte, interrupting for purposes of her own a story that 
 threatened to expand unprofitably, "and that was always 
 the way with all the M'Donaghs. Didn't I meet that lad's 
 cousin, Shamus Bawn, driving a new side-car this morning, 
 and his father only dead a week. I suppose now he's got 
 the money he thinks he'll never get to the end of it, though 
 indeed it isn't so long since I heard he was looking for 
 money, and found it hard enough to get it." 
 
 Mrs. Lydon gave a laugh of polite acquiescence, and 
 wondered inwardly whether Miss Mullen had as intimate a 
 knowledge of everyone's affairs as she seemed to have of 
 Shamus Bawn's. 
 
 " Oh, they say a manny a thing " she observed with 
 well-simulated inanity. " Arrah 1 dheen dheffeth, Dinny ! 
 thurrum cussoge um'na" 
 
 " Yes, hurry on and give me the coat, Dinny," said 
 Charlotte, displaying that knowledge of Irish that always 
 came as a shock to those who were uncertain as to its 
 limitations. 
 
 The tailor untwisted his short legs and descended stiffly 
 to the floor, and having helped Charlotte into the coat, 
 pushed her into the light of the open door, and surveyed 
 
316 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 his handiwork with his large head on one side, and the 
 bitten ends of thread still hanging on his lower lip. 
 
 " It turrned well," he said, passing his hand approvingly 
 over Miss Mullen's thick shoulder; "afther all, the good 
 stuffs the best ; that's fine honest stuff that'll wear forty of 
 thim other thrash. That's the soort that'll shtand." 
 
 " To the death ! " interjected Mrs. Lydon fervently. 
 
 " How many wrinkles are there in the back ? " said 
 Charlotte ; " tell me the truth now, Dinny ; remember 
 'twas only last week you were ' making your sowl ' at the 
 mission." 
 
 " Tchah ! " said Dinny Lydon contemptuously, " it's little 
 I regard the mission, but I wouldn't be bothered tellin' ye 
 lies about the likes o' this," surreptitiously smoothing as he 
 spoke a series of ridges above the hips; "that's a grand 
 clane back as ever I see." 
 
 " How independent he is about his missions ! " said 
 Charlotte jibingly. " Ha ! Dinny me man, if you were 
 sick you'd be the first to be roaring for the priest ! " 
 
 " Faith, divil a roar," returned the atheistical Dinny ; " if 
 I couldn't knock the stone out of the gap for meself, the 
 priest couldn't do it for me." 
 
 " Oh, Gaad ! Dinny, have conduct before Miss Mullen ! " 
 cried Mrs. Lydon. 
 
 " He may say what he likes, if he wouldn't drop candle 
 grease on my jacket," said Charlotte, who had taken off the 
 coat and was critically examining every seam ; " or, indeed, 
 Mrs. Lydon, I believe it was yourself did it ! " she ex- 
 claimed, suddenly intercepting an indescribable glance of 
 admonition from Mrs. Dinny to her husband ; " that's wax 
 candle grease ! I believe you wore it yourself at Michael 
 M'Donagh's wake, and that's why it was finished four days 
 ago." 
 
 Mrs. Lydon uttered a shriek of merriment at the absurdity 
 of the suggestion, and then fell to disclaimers so voluble as 
 at once to convince Miss Mullen of her guilt. The accusa- 
 tion was not pressed home, and Dinny's undertaking to re- 
 move the grease with a hot iron was accepted with surpris- 
 ing amiability. Charlotte sat down on a chair whose 
 shattered frame bore testimony to the renowned violence of 
 Mrs. Lydon when under the influence of liquor, and en- 
 
The Real Charlotte. 317 
 
 couraging the singed and half-starved cat on to her lap, she 
 addressed herself to conversation. 
 
 " Wasn't Michael M'Donagh husband to your mother's 
 cousin ? " she said to the tailor ; " I'm told he had a very 
 large funeral." 
 
 " He had that/' answered Dinny, pushing the black hair 
 back from his high forehead, and looking more than ever 
 like a Jewish rabbi ; " three priests, an' five an' twenty cars, 
 an' fifteen pounds of althar money." 
 
 " Well, the three priests have a right to pray their big 
 best for him, with five pounds apiece in their pockets," re- 
 marked Charlotte; "I suppose it was the M'Donagh side 
 gave the most of the altar. Those brothers of old Michael's 
 are all stinking of money." 
 
 " Oh, they're middlin' snug," said Dinny, who had just 
 enough family feeling for the M'Donaghs to make him 
 chary of admitting their wealth ; " annyway, they're able to 
 slap down their five shillin's or their ten shillin' bit upon the 
 althar as well as another." 
 
 " Who got the land ? " asked Charlotte, stroking the cat's 
 filthy head, and thereby perfuming her fingers with salt 
 fish. 
 
 " Oh, how do I know what turning and twisting of keys 
 there was in it afther himself dyin' ? " said the tailor, with 
 the caution which his hearers understood to be a fatiguing 
 but inevitable convention ; " they say the daughter got the 
 biggest half, an' Shamus Bawn got the other. There's 
 where the battle'll be between them." He laughed sardoni- 
 cally, as he held up the hot iron and spat upon it to 
 ascertain its heat. 
 
 "He'd better let his sister alone, said Charlotte. 
 " Shamus Bawn has more land this minute than he has 
 money enough to stock, with that farm he got from Mr, 
 Lambert the other day, without trying to get more." 
 
 " Oh, Jim's not so poor altogether that he couldn't 
 bring the law on her if he'd like," said Dinny, immediately 
 resenting the slighting tone ; " he got a good lump of a 
 fortune with the wife." 
 
 "Ah, what's fifty pounds!" said Charlotte scornfully. 
 " I daresay he wanted every penny of it to pay the fine on 
 Knocklara." 
 
318 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 " Arrah, fifty pounds ! God help ye ! " exclaimed Dinny 
 Lydon with superior scorn. "No, but a hundhred an' 
 eighty was what he put down on the table to Lambert for 
 it, and it's little but he had to give the two hundhred 
 itself." 
 
 Mrs. Lydon looked up from the hearth where she was 
 squatted, fanning the fire with her red petticoat to heat 
 another iron for her husband. " Sure I know Dinny's safe 
 tellin' it to a lady," she said, rolling her dissolute cunning 
 eye from her husband to Miss Mullen ; " but ye'll not 
 spake of it asthore. Jimmy had some dhrink taken when 
 he shown Dinny the docket, because Lambert said he 
 wouldn't give the farm so chape to e'er a one but Jimmy, 
 an' indeed Jimmy'd break every bone in our body if he got 
 the wind of a word that 'twas through us the neighbours 
 had it to say he had that much money with him. Jimmy's 
 very close in himself that way." 
 
 Charlotte laughed good-humouredly. "Oh, there's no 
 fear of me, Mrs. Lydon. It's no affair of mine either way," 
 she said reassuringly. " Here, hurry with me jacket, 
 Dinny ; I'll be glad enough to have it on me going home." 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 SIR BENJAMIN DYSART'S funeral was an event of the past. 
 It was a full three weeks since the family vault in Lismoyle 
 Churchyard had closed its door upon that ornament of county 
 society; Lady Dysart's friends were beginning to recover from 
 the strain of writing letters of condolence to her on her 
 bereavement, and Christopher, after sacrificing to his de- 
 parted parent's memory a week of perfect sailing weather, had 
 had his boat painted, and had relapsed into his normal habit 
 of spending as much of his time as was convenient on the 
 lake. 
 
 There was still the mingled collapse and stir in the air 
 that comes between the end of an old regime and the be- 
 ginning of a new. Christopher had resigned his appoint- 
 ment at Copenhagen, feeling that his life would, for the 
 future, be vaguely filled with new duties and occupations, 
 but he had not yet discovered anything very novel to do be- 
 
The Real Charlotte. 319 
 
 yond signing his name a good many times, and trying to be- 
 come accustomed to hearing himself called Sir Christopher ; 
 occupations that seemed rather elementary in the construc- 
 tion of a career. His want of initiative energy in every-day 
 matters kept him motionless and apathetic, waiting for his 
 new atmosphere to make itself palpable to him, and pre- 
 pared to resign himself to its conditions. He even, in his 
 unquenchable self-consciousness, knew that it would be 
 wholesome for him if these were such as he least liked ; but 
 in the meantime, he remained passively unsettled, and a 
 letter from Lord Castlemore, in which his tact and con- 
 scientiousness as a secretary were fully set forth, roused no 
 outside ambition in him. He re-read it on a shimmering 
 May morning, with one arm hanging over the tiller of his 
 boat, as she crept with scarcely breathing sails through the 
 pale streaks of calm that lay like dreams upon the lake. 
 He was close under the woods of Bruff, close enough to 
 feel how still and busy they were in the industry of spring. 
 It seemed to him that the sound of the insects was like the 
 humming of her loom, and almost mechanically he turned 
 over the envelope of Lord Castlemore's letter, and began in 
 the old familiar way to scrawl a line or two on the back of 
 it. 
 
 The well-known crest, however, disconcerted his fancy, 
 and he fell again to ruminating upon the letter itself. If 
 this expressed the sum of his abilities, diplomatic life was 
 certainly not worth living. Tact and conscientiousness were 
 qualities that would grace the discharge of a doctor's butler, 
 and might be expected from anyone of the most ordinary 
 intelligence. He could not think that his services to his 
 country, as concentrated in Lord Castlemore, were at all re- 
 markable ; they had given him far less trouble than the 
 most worthless of those efforts in prose and verse, that, as he 
 thought contemptuously, were like the skeletons that mark 
 the desert course of a caravan ; he did not feel the diffi- 
 culty, and he, therefore, thought the achievement small. A 
 toying breeze fluttered the letter in his hand, and the boat 
 tilted languidly in recognition of it. The water began to 
 murmur about the keel, and Christopher presently found 
 himself gliding smoothly towards the middle of the lake. 
 
 He looked across at Lismoyle, spreading placidly along 
 
320 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 the margin of the water, and as he felt the heat of the sun 
 and the half-forgotten largeness of summer in the air, he 
 could have believed himself back in the August of last year, 
 and he turned his eyes to the trees of Rosemount as if the 
 sight of them would bring disillusionment. It was some 
 time now since he had first been made ashamed of the dis- 
 covery that disillusionment also meant relief. For some 
 months he had clung to his dream ; at first helplessly, with 
 a sore heart, afterwards with a more conscious taking hold, 
 as of something gained, that made life darker, but for ever 
 richer. It had been torture of the most simple, unbear- 
 able kind, to drive away from Tally Ho, with the knowledge 
 that Hawkins was preferred to him ; but sentiment had 
 deftly usurped the place of his blind suffering, and that stage 
 came that is almost inevitable with poetic natures, when the 
 artistic sense can analyse sorrow, and sees the beauty of de- 
 feat. Then he had heard that Francie was going to marry 
 Lambert, and the news had done more in one moment to 
 disillusion him than common sense could do in years. The 
 thought fitting him with a kind of horror for her that she 
 could tolerate such a fate as marrying Roddy Lambert. He 
 knew nothing of the tyrannies of circumstance. To pros- 
 perous young men like Christopher, poverty, except bare- 
 footed and in rags, is a name, and unpaid bills a joke, 
 That Albatross Villa could have driven her to the tremen- 
 dous surrender of marriage was a thing incredible. All 
 that was left for him to believe was that he had been mis- 
 taken, and that the lucent quality that he thought he had 
 found in her soul had existed only in his imagination. Now 
 when he thought of her face it was with a curious half re- 
 gret that so beautiful a thing should no longer have any 
 power to move him. Some sense of loss remained, but it 
 was charged with self pity for the loss of an ideal. Another 
 man in Christopher's position would not probably have 
 troubled himself about ideals, but Christopher, fortunately, 
 or unfortunately for him, was not like other men. 
 
 The fact must even be faced that he had probably never 
 been in love with her, according to the common acceptation 
 of the term. His intellect exhausted his emotions and killed 
 them with solicitude, as a child digs up a flower to see if it 
 is growing, and his emotions themselves had a feminine re- 
 
The Real Charlotte. 321 
 
 finement, but lacked the feminine quality of unreasoning 
 pertinacity, From self-pity for the loss of an ideal to 
 gratitude for an escape is not far to go, and all that now 
 remained to him of bitterness was a gentle self-contempt for 
 his own inadequacy in falling in love, as in everything 
 else. 
 
 It may be imagined that in Lismoyle Francie was a valued 
 and almost invariable topic of conversation. Each visitor to 
 Rosemount went there in the character of a scout, and a de- 
 tailed account of her interview was published on every 
 possible occasion. 
 
 " Well, I took my time about calling on her," observed 
 Mrs. Baker; " I thought I'd let her see I was in no hurry." 
 
 Mrs. Corkran, with whom Mrs. Baker was having tea, felt 
 guiltily conscious of having called on Mrs. Lambert two 
 days after her arrival, and hastened to remind the company 
 of the pastoral nature of the attention. 
 
 *' Oh, of course we know clergymen's families can't pick 
 their company," went on Mrs. Baker, dismissing the inter- 
 ruption not without a secret satisfaction that Carrie Beattie, 
 who, in the absence of Miss Corkran, was pouring out tea 
 for her future mother-in-law, should see that other people 
 did not consider the Rev. Joseph such a catch as she did. 
 "Only that Lambert's such a friend of Mr. Baker's, and 
 always banked with him, I declare I don't know that I'd 
 have gone at all. I assure you it gave me quite a turn to 
 see her stuck up there in poor Lucy Lambert's chair, talk- 
 ing about the grand hotels that she was in, in London and 
 Paris, as if she never swept out a room or cleaned a saucepan 
 in her life." 
 
 "She had all the walls done round with those penny 
 fans," struck in Miss Kathleen Baker, " and a box of French 
 bongbongs out on the table ; and oh, mamma ! did you 
 notice the big photograph of him and her together on the 
 chimney-piece ? " 
 
 " I could notice nothing, Kathleen, and I didn't want to 
 notice them," replied Mrs. Baker ; " I could think of noth- 
 ing but of what poor Lucy Lambert would say to see her 
 husband dancing attendance on that young hussy without so 
 ftiuch as a mourning ring on him, and her best tea-service 
 trashed about as if it was kitchen delf." 
 
322 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 " Was he very devoted, Mrs. Baker ? " asked Miss Beattie 
 with a simper. 
 
 " Oh, I suppose he was," answered Mrs. Baker, as if in 
 contempt for any sentiment inspired by Francie, "but I 
 can't say I observed anything very particular." 
 
 " Oh, then, / did ! " said Miss Baker with a nod of 
 superior intelligence ; " I was watching them all the time ; 
 every word she uttered he was listening to it, and when she 
 asked for the tea-cosy \itflew for it ! " 
 
 " Eliza Hackett told my Maria there was shocking waste 
 going on in the house now ; fires in the drawing-room from 
 eight o'clock in the morning, and this the month of May ! " 
 said Mrs. Corkran with an approving eye at the cascade of 
 cut paper that decked her own grate, " and the cold meat 
 given to the boy that cleans the boots ! n 
 
 " Roddy Lambert'll be sorry for it some day when it's 
 too late," said Mrs. Baker darkly, " but men are all alike ; 
 it's out of sight out of mind with them ! " 
 
 " Oh, Mrs. Baker," wheezed Mrs. Corkran with asthmatic 
 fervour, " I think you're altogether too cynical ; I'm sure 
 that's not your opinion of Mr. Baker." 
 
 " I don't know what he might do if I was dead," replied 
 Mrs. Baker, " but I'll answer for it he'll not be carrying on 
 with Number Two while I'm alive, like other people I 
 know ! " 
 
 " Oh, don't say such things before these young ladies," 
 said Mrs. Corkran ; "I wish them no greater blessing 
 of Providence than a good husband, and I think I may say 
 that dear Carry will find one in my Joseph." 
 
 The almost death-bed solemnity of this address paralysed 
 the conversation for a moment, and Miss Beattie concealed 
 her blushes by going to the window to see whose was the 
 vehicle that had just driven by. 
 
 " Oh, it's Mr. Hawkins ! " she exclaimed, feeling the im- 
 portance of the information. 
 
 Kathleen Baker sprang from her seat and ran to the 
 window. " So it is 1 " she cried, " and I bet you sixpence 
 he's going to Rosemount i My goodness, I wish it was to- 
 day we had gone there 1 " 
 
The Real Charlotte. 323 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 
 HAWKINS had, like Mrs. Baker, been in no hurry to call 
 upon the bride. He had seen her twice in church, he had 
 once met her out driving with her husband, and, lastly, he 
 had come upon her face to face in the principal street of 
 Lismoyle, and had received a greeting of aristocratic hauteur, 
 as remarkable as the newly acquired English accent in 
 which it was delivered. After these things a visit to her 
 was unavoidable, and, in spite of a bad conscience, he felt, 
 when he at last set out for Rosemount, an excitement that 
 was agreeable after the calm of life at Lismoyle. 
 
 There was no one in the drawing-room when he was 
 shown into it, and as the maid closed the door behind him 
 he heard a quick step run through the hall and up the 
 stairs. " Gone to put on her best bib and tucker," he said 
 to himself with an increase of confidence ; " I'll bet she saw 
 me coming." The large photograph alluded to by Miss 
 Baker was on the chimneypiece, and he walked over and 
 examined it with great interest. It obeyed the traditions of 
 honeymoon portraits, and had the inevitable vulgarity of 
 such ; Lambert, sitting down, turned the leaves of a book, 
 and Francie, standing behind him, rested one hand on his 
 shoulder, while the other held a basket of flowers. In spite 
 of its fatuity as a composition, both portraits were good, and 
 they had moreover an air of prosperity and new clothes that 
 Mr. Hawkins found to be almost repulsive. He studied the 
 photograph with deepening distaste until he was aware of a 
 footstep at the door, and braced himself for the encounter, 
 with his heart beating uncomfortably and unexpectedly. 
 
 They shook hands with the politeness of slight acquaint- 
 ance, and sat down, Hawkins thinking he had never seen 
 her look so pretty or so smart, and wondering what he was 
 going to talk to her about. It was evidently going to be 
 war to the knife, he thought, as he embarked haltingly upon 
 the weather, and found that he was far less at his ease than 
 he had expected to be. 
 
 "Yes, it's warmer here than it was in England," said Francie, 
 looking languidly at the rings on her left hand ; " we were 
 perished there after Paris." 
 
324 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 She felt that the familiar mention of such names must of 
 necessity place her in a superior position, and she was so 
 stimulated by their associations with her present grandeur 
 that she raised her eyes, and looked at him. Their eyes 
 met with as keen a sense of contact as if their hands had 
 suddenly touched, and each, with a perceptible jerk, looked 
 away. 
 
 " You say that Paris was hot, was it ? " said Hawkins, with 
 something of an effort. " I haven't been there since I went 
 with some people the year before last, and it was as hot 
 then as they make it. I thought it rather a hole." 
 
 " Oh, indeed ? " said Francie, chillingly ; " Mr. Lambert 
 and I enjoyed it greatly. You've been here all the spring, 
 I suppose ? " 
 
 " Yes ; I haven't been out of this place, except for 
 Punchestown, since I came back from leave ; " then with a 
 reckless feeling that he would break up this frozen sea of 
 platitudes, " since that time that I met you on the pier at 
 Kingstown." 
 
 " Oh yes," said Francie, as if trying to recall some unim- 
 portant incident ; " you were there with the Dysarts, 
 weren't you ? " 
 
 Hawkins became rather red. She was palpably overdoing 
 it, but that did not diminish the fact that he was being 
 snubbed, and though he might, in a general and guarded 
 way, have admitted that he deserved it, he realised that he 
 bitterly resented being snubbed by Francie. 
 
 " Yes," he said, with an indifference as deliberately 
 exaggerated as her own, " I travelled over with them. I 
 remember how surprised we were to see you and Mr. Lam- 
 bert there." 
 
 She felt the intention on his part to say something 
 disagreeable, and it stung her more than the words, 
 
 "Why were you surprised?" she asked coolly. 
 
 "Well er I don't exactly know," stammered Mr. 
 Hawkins, a good deal taken aback by the directness of the 
 inquiry ; " we didn't exactly know where you were thought 
 Lambert was at Lismoyle, you know." He began to wish 
 he had brought Cursiter with him ; no one could have guessed 
 that she would have turned into such a cat and given herself 
 such airs ; her ultra-refinement, and her affected accent, and 
 
The Real Charlotte. 325 
 
 her exceeding prettiness, exasperated him in a way that 
 he could not have explained, and though the visit did not 
 fail of excitement, he could not flatter himself that he was 
 taking quite the part in it that he had expected. Certainly 
 Mrs. Lambert was not maintaining the role that he had 
 allotted her ; huffiness was one thing, but infernal swagger 
 was quite another. It is painful for a young man of Mr. 
 Hawkins' type to realise that an affection that he has 
 inspired can wane and even die, and Francie's self- 
 possession was fast robbing him of his own. 
 
 11 1 hear that your regiment is after being ordered to 
 India ? " she said cheerfully, when it became apparent that 
 Hawkins could find no more to say. 
 
 " Yes, so they say ; next trooping season will about see 
 us, I expect, and they're safe to send us to Aldershot first, 
 so we may be out of this at any minute." He glanced at 
 her as he spoke, to see how she took it. 
 
 " Oh, that'll be very nice for you/' answered Francie, still 
 more cheerfully. " I suppose," she went on with her most 
 aristocratic drawl, "that you'll be married before you go 
 out?" 
 
 She had arranged the delivery of this thrust before she 
 came downstairs, and it glided from her tongue as easily as 
 she could have wished. 
 
 " Yes, I daresay I shall/' he answered defiantly, though 
 the provokingly ready blush of a fair man leaped to his face. 
 He looked at her, angry with himself for reddening, and 
 angrier with her for blazoning her indifference, by means of 
 a question that seemed to him the height of bad taste and 
 spitefulness. As he looked, the colour that burned in his 
 own face repeated itself in hers with slow relentlessness ; at 
 the sight of it a sudden revulsion of feeling brought him 
 dangerously near to calling her by her name, with reproaches 
 for her heartlessness, but before the word took form she had 
 risen quickly, and, saying something incoherent about 
 ordering tea, moved towards the bell, her head turned from 
 him with the helpless action of a shy child. 
 
 Hawkins, hardly knowing what he was doing, started 
 forward, and as he did so the door opened, and a well-known 
 voice announced, 
 
 " Miss Charlotte Mullen \ 
 
326 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 The owner of the voice advanced into the room, and saw, 
 as anyone must have seen, the flushed faces of its two 
 occupants, and felt that nameless quality in the air that tells 
 of interruption. 
 
 " I took the liberty of announcing myself," she said, with 
 her most affable smile ; " I knew you were at home, as I 
 saw Mr. Hawkins' trap at the door, and I just walked 
 in." 
 
 As she shook hands and sat down she expanded easily 
 into a facetious description of the difficulties of getting her 
 old horse along the road from Gurthnamuckla, and by the 
 time she had finished her story Hawkins' complexion had 
 regained its ordinary tone, and Francie had resumed the air 
 of elegant nonchalance appropriate to the importance of the 
 married state. Nothing, in fact, could have been more 
 admirable than Miss Mullen's manner. She praised Francie's 
 new chair covers and Indian tea ; she complimented Mr. 
 Hawkins on his new pony ; even going so far as to reproach 
 him for not having been out to Gurthnamuckla to see her, 
 till Francie felt some pricks of conscience about the sceptical 
 way that she and Lambert had laughed together over 
 Charlotte's amiability when she paid her first visit to them. 
 She found inexpressible ease in the presence of a third 
 person as capable as Charlotte of carrying on a conversation 
 with the smallest possible assistance ; sheltered by it she 
 slowly recovered from her mental overthrow, and, furious as 
 she was with Hawkins for his part in it, she was beginning 
 to be able to patronise him again by the time that he got 
 up to go away. 
 
 " Well, Francie, my dear child," began Charlotte, as soon 
 as the door had closed behind him, " I've scarcely had a 
 word with you since you came home. You had such a 
 reception the last day I was here that I had to content 
 myself with talking to Mrs. Beattie, and hearing all about 
 the price of underclothes. Indeed I had a good mind to 
 tell her that only for your magnanimity she wouldn't be 
 having so much to say about Carrie's trousseau ! " 
 
 "Indeed she was welcome to him !" said Francie, putting 
 her chin in the air, " that little wretch, indeed ! " 
 
 It was one of the moments when she touched the extreme 
 of satisfaction in being married, and in order to cover, for 
 
The Real Charlotte. 327 
 
 her own and Charlotte's sake, the remembrance of that 
 idiotic blush, she assumed a little extra bravado. 
 
 "Talking of your late admirers " went on Charlotte, 
 " for I hope for poor Roddy's sake they're not present ones 
 I never saw a young fellow so improved in his manners 
 as Mr. Hawkins. There was a time I didn't fancy him as 
 you may remember, though we've agreed to say nothing 
 more about our old squabbles but I think he's chastened 
 by adversity. That engagement, you know " she paused, 
 and cast a side-long, unobtrusive glance at Francie. " He's 
 not the first young man that's been whipped in before 
 marriage as well as after it, and I think the more he looks 
 at it the less he likes it." 
 
 " He's been looking at it a long time now," said Francie 
 with a laugh that was intended to be careless, but into 
 which a sneer made its way. " I wonder Roddy isn't in," 
 she continued, changing the subject to one in which no pit- 
 falls lurked ; " I wouldn't be surprised if he'd gone to 
 Gurthnamuckla to see you, Charlotte; he's been saying 
 ever since we came back he wanted to have a talk with you, 
 but he's been so busy he hadn't a minute." 
 
 " If I'm not greatly mistaken," said Charlotte, standing 
 up so as to be able to see out of the window, " here's the 
 man of the house himself. What horse is that he's on ? " 
 her eyes taking in with unwilling admiration the swaggering 
 ease of seat and squareness of shoulder that had so often 
 captivated her taste, as Lambert, not unaware of spectators 
 at the window, overcame much callow remonstrance on the 
 part of the young horse he was riding, at being asked to 
 stand at the door till a boy came round to take him. 
 
 " Oh, that's the new four-year-old that Roddy had taken 
 in off Gurthnamuckla while we were away," said Francie, 
 leaning her elbow against the shutter and looking out too. 
 t ' He's an awful wild young brat of a thing ! Look at the 
 way he's hoisting now ! Roddy says he'll have me up on 
 him before the summer's out, but I tell him that if he does 
 I won't be on him long." Her eyes met her husband's, and 
 she laughed and tapped on the glass, beckoning imperiously 
 to him to come in. 
 
 Charlotte turned away from the window, and when, a few 
 minutes afterwards, Mr. Lambert came into the room, the 
 
328 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 visitor had put her gloves on, and was making her farewells 
 to her hostess. 
 
 " No, Roddy," she said, " I must be off now. I'm like 
 the beggars, ' tay and turn out ' is my motto. But suppos- 
 ing now that you bring this young lady over to lunch with 
 me to-morrow no, not to-morrow, that's Sunday come on 
 Monday. How would that suit your book ? " 
 
 Lambert assented with a good grace that struck Francie 
 as being wonderfully well assumed, and followed Miss 
 Mullen out to put her in her phaeton. 
 
 Francie closed the door behind them, and sat down. 
 She was glad she had met Hawkins and got it over, and as 
 she reviewed the incidents of his visit, she thought that on 
 the whole she had come very near her own ideal of behavi- 
 our. Cool, sarcastic, and dignified, even though she had, 
 for one moment, got a little red, he could not but feel that 
 she had acted as became a married lady, and shown him 
 his place once for all. As for him, he had been horrible, 
 she thought bitterly ; sitting up and talking to her as if he 
 had never seen her before, and going on as if he had never 
 she got up hastily as if to escape from the hateful memo- 
 ries of last year that thrust themselves suddenly into her 
 thoughts. How thankful she was that she had shown him 
 she was not inconsolable ; she wished that Roddy had come 
 in while he was there, and had stood over him, and over- 
 shadowed him with his long legs and broad shoulders, and 
 his air of master of the house. Why on earth had Charlotte 
 praised him? Gurthnamuckla must have had the most 
 extraordinarily sweetening effect upon her, for she seemed 
 to have a good word for everybody now, and Roddy's notion 
 that she would want to be coaxed into a good temper was 
 all nonsense, and conceited nonsense too, and so she would 
 tell him. It was not in Francie's light, wholesome nature 
 to bear malice ; the least flutter of the olive branch, the 
 faintest glimmer of the flag of truce, was enough to make 
 her forgive an injury and forget an insult. 
 
 When her husband came back she turned towards him 
 with a sparkle in her eye. 
 
 " Well, Roddy, I hope you squeezed her hand when you 
 were saying good-bye ! I daresay now you'll want me to 
 believe that it's all in honour of you that she's asked us 
 
The Real Charlotte. 329 
 
 over to lunch to-morrow, and I suppose that's what she was 
 telling you out in the hall ? Aren't you sorry you didn't 
 marry her instead of me ? " 
 
 Lambert did not answer, but came over to where she was 
 standing, and putting his arm round her, drew her towards 
 him and kissed her with a passion that seemed too serious 
 an answer to her question. She could not know, as she 
 laughed and hid her face from him, that he was saying to 
 himself, " Of course he was bound to come and call, he'd 
 have bad to do that no matter who she was 1 " 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 SPRING, that year, came delicately in among the Galway 
 hills ; in primroses, in wild bursts of gorse, and in the later 
 snow of hawthorn, unbeaten by the rain or the wet west 
 wind of rougher seasons. A cuckoo had dropped out of 
 space into the copse at the back of Gurthnamuckla, and 
 kept calling there with a lusty sweetness ; a mist of green 
 was breathed upon the trees, and in the meadows by the 
 lake a corncrake was adding a diffident guttural or two to 
 the chirruping chorus of coots and moorhens. Mr. Lambert's 
 three-year-olds grew and flourished on the young rich grass, 
 and, in the turbulence of their joie de vtvre, hunted the 
 lambs, and bit the calves, and jumped every barrier that the 
 ingenuity of Miss Mullen's herdsman could devise. " Those 
 brutes must be put into the Stone Field," the lady of the 
 house had said, regarding their gambols with a sour eye ; 
 " I don't care whether the grass is good or bad, they'll have 
 to do with it ; " and when she and her guests went forth 
 after their lunch to inspect the farm in general and the 
 young horses in particular, it was to the Stone Field that 
 they first bent their steps. 
 
 No one who has the idea of a green-embowered English 
 lane can hope to realise the fortified alley that wound through 
 the heart of the pastures of Gurthnamuckla, and was known 
 as the Farm Lane. It was scarcely wide enough for two 
 people to walk abreast ; loose stone walls, of four or five 
 feet in thickness, towered on either side of it as high as the 
 head of a tall man ; to meet a cow in it involved either re- 
 
330 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 treat or the perilous ascent of one of the walls. It em- 
 bodied the simple expedient of bygone farmers for clearing 
 their fields of stones, and contained raw material enough to 
 build a church. Charlotte, Mr. Lambert, and Francie ad- 
 vanced in single file along its meaningless windings, until it 
 finished its career at the gate of the Stone Field, a long 
 tongue of pasture that had the lake for a boundary on three 
 of its sides, and was cut off from the mainland by a wall not 
 inferior in height and solidity to those of the lane. 
 
 " There, Roddy," said Miss Mullen, as she opened the 
 gate, "there's where I had to banish them, and I don't 
 think they're too badly off." 
 
 The young horses were feeding at the farthest point of 
 the field, fetlock deep in the flowery grass, with the sparkling 
 blue of the lake making a background to their slender shapes. 
 
 " They look like money, Charlotte, I think. That brown 
 filly ought to bring a hundred at least next Ballinasloe fair, 
 when she knows how to jump," said Lambert, as he and 
 Charlotte walked across the field, leaving Francie, who saw 
 no reason for pretending an interest that was not expected 
 of her, to amuse herself by picking cowslips near the gate. 
 
 "I'm glad to hear you say that, Roddy," replied Charlotte. 
 " It's a comfort to think anything looks like money these 
 bad times ; I've never known prices so low." 
 
 " They're lower than I ever thought they'd go, by Jove," 
 Lambert answered gloomily. " I'm going up to Mayo, 
 collecting, next week, and if I don't do better there than I've 
 done here, I daresay Dysart won't think so much of his 
 father's shoes after all." 
 
 He was striding along, taking no trouble to suit his pace 
 to Charlotte's, and perhaps the indifference to her com- 
 panionship that it showed, as well as the effort involved in 
 keeping beside him, had the effect of irritating her. 
 
 "Maybe he might think them good enough to kick people 
 out with," she said with a disagreeable laugh ; " I remember, 
 in the good old times, when my father and Sir Benjamin 
 ruled the roast, we heard very little about bad collections." 
 
 It struck Lambert that though this was the obvious 
 moment for that business talk that he had come over for, it 
 was not a propitious one. " I wonder if the macaroni 
 cheese disagreed with her ? " he thought ; " it was beastly 
 
The Real Charlotte. 331 
 
 enough to do it, anyhow. You may remember," he said 
 aloud, " that in the good old times the property was worth 
 just about double what it is now, and a matter of three or 
 four hundred pounds either way made no difference to 
 signify." 
 
 " D'ye think ye'll be that much short this time ? " 
 
 She darted the question at him with such keenness that 
 Lambert inwardly recoiled before it, though it was the point 
 to which he had wished to bring her. 
 
 " Oh, of course one can't be sure/' he said, retreating from 
 his position ; " but I've just got a sort of general idea that 
 I'll be a bit under the mark this time." 
 
 He was instinctively afraid of Charlotte, but in this 
 moment he knew, perhaps for the first time, how much 
 afraid. In theory he believed in his old power over her, 
 and clung to the belief with the fatuity of a vain man, but 
 he had always been uncomfortably aware that she was intel- 
 lectually his master, and though he thought he could still 
 sway her heart with a caress, he knew he could never outwit 
 her. 
 
 " Oh, no one knows better than I do what a thankless 
 business it is, these times," said Charlotte with a reassuring 
 carelessness ; " it's a case of ' pull devil, pull baker,' though 
 indeed I don't know under which head poor Christopher 
 Dysart comes. And as we've got on to the sordid topic of 
 money, Roddy, I'm not going to ask yer honour for a re- 
 duction of the rint, ye needn't be afraid but I've been 
 rather pinched by the expense I've been put to in doing up 
 the house and stocking the farm, and it would be mighty 
 convaynient to me, if it would be convaynient to you, to let 
 me have a hundred pounds or so of that money I lent you 
 last year." 
 
 " Well Charlotte " began Lambert, clearing his throat, 
 and striking with his stick at the heads of the buttercups, 
 "that's the very thing I've been anxious to talk to you 
 about. The fact is, I've had an awful lot of expense myself 
 this last twelve months, and, as I told you, I can't lay a 
 finger on anything except the interest of what poor Lucy left 
 me and er I'd give you any percentage you like, you 
 know ? " He broke off for an instant, and then began 
 again. " You can see for yourself what a sin it would be to 
 
332 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 sell those things now," he pointed at the three young horses, 
 " when they'll just bring three times the money this time 
 next year." 
 
 " Oh yes," said Charlotte, " but my creditors might say it 
 was more of a sin for me not to pay my debts." 
 
 Lambert stood still, and dug his stick into the ground, 
 and Charlotte, watching him, knew that she had put in her 
 sickle and reaped her first sheaf. 
 
 " All right," he said, biting his lip, " if your creditors can 
 manage to hold out till after the fair next week, I daresay by 
 selling every horse Pve got I could let you have your money 
 then." As he made the offer, he trusted that its quixotic 
 heroism would make Charlotte ashamed of herself; no 
 woman could possibly expect such a sacrifice as that from a 
 man, and the event proved that he was right 
 
 This was not the sacrifice that Miss Mullen wished for. 
 
 " Oh, pooh, pooh, Roddy ! you needn't take me up in 
 such earnest as that," she said in her most friendly voice, 
 and Lambert congratulated himself upon his astuteness ; " I 
 only meant that if you could let me have a hundred or so in 
 the course of the next month, it would be a help to my 
 finances." 
 
 Lambert could not bring himself to admit that he was as 
 little able to pay her one hundred as three ; at all events, a 
 month would give him time to look about him, and if he 
 made a good collection he could easily borrow it from the 
 estate account. 
 
 " Oh, if that's all," he answered, affecting more relief than 
 he felt, " I can let you have it in a fortnight or so." 
 
 They were near the lake by this time, and the young 
 horses feeding by its margin flung up their heads and stared 
 in statuesque surprise at their visitors. 
 
 "They'll not let you near them," said Charlotte, as 
 Lambert walked slowly towards them ; " they're as wild 
 as hawks. And, goodness me ! that girl's gone out of 
 the field and left the gate open 1 Wait a minute till I go 
 back and shut it." 
 
 Lambert stood and looked after her as she hastened 
 cumbrously back towards the gate, and wondered how he 
 had ever liked her, or brought himself to have any dealings 
 with her, and his eye left her quickly to follow the red 
 
The Reed Charlotte. 333 
 
 parasol that, moving slowly 'along above the grey wall, 
 marked Francie's progress along the lane. Charlotte hurried 
 on towards the gate, well satisfied with the result of her con- 
 versation, and she was within some fifty yards of it when a 
 loud and excited shout from Lambert, combined with the 
 thud of galloping hoofs, made her start round. The young 
 horses had been frightened by Lambert's approach, and after 
 one or two circling swoops, had seen the open gate, and, 
 headed by the brown filly, were careering towards it. 
 
 " The gate ! Charlotte ! " roared Lambert, rushing futilely 
 after the horses, " shut the gate ! " 
 
 Charlotte was off in an instant, realising as quickly as 
 Lambert what might happen if Francie were charged in the 
 narrow lane by this living avalanche ; even in the first in- 
 stant of comprehension another idea had presented itself. 
 Should she stumble and so not reach the gate in time ? It 
 was fascinatingly simple, but it was too simple, and it was 
 by no means certain. 
 
 Charlotte ran her hardest, and, at some slight personal 
 risk, succeeded in slamming the gate in the face of the 
 brown filly, as she and her attendant squires dashed up to 
 it. There was a great deal of slipping about and snorting, 
 before the trio recovered themselves, and retired to pass off 
 their discomfiture in a series of dislocating bucks and squeal- 
 ing snaps at each other, and then Charlotte, purple from her 
 exertions, advanced to meet Lambert with the smile of the 
 benefactor broad upon her face. His was blotched white 
 and red with fright and running ; without a breath left to 
 thank her, he took her hand, and wrung it with a more 
 genuine emotion than he had ever before felt for her. 
 
 Francie, meanwhile, strolled slowly up the lane towards 
 the house, with her red parasol on her shoulder and her 
 bunch of cowslips in her hand. She knew that the visit to 
 the Stone Field was only the preliminary to a crawling in- 
 spection of every cow, sheep, and potato ridge on the farm, 
 and she remembered that she had seen a novel of attractive 
 aspect on the table in the drawing-room. She felt singu- 
 larly uninterested in everything; Gurthnamuckla was nothing 
 but Tally Ho over again on a larger and rather cleaner 
 scale ; the same servants, the same cats, the same cockatoo, 
 the same leathery pastry and tough mutton. Last summer 
 
334 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 these things had mingled themselves easily into her every- 
 day enjoyment of life, as amusing and not unpleasant 
 elements ; now she promised herself that, no matter what 
 Roddy said, this was the last time she would come to lunch 
 with Charlotte. 
 
 Roddy was very good to her and all that, but there was 
 nothing new about him either, and marriage was an awful 
 humdrum thing after all. She looked back with something 
 of regret to the crowded drudging household at Albatross 
 Villa ; she had at least had something to do there, and she 
 had not been lonely ; she often found herself very lonely at 
 Rosemount. Before she reached the house she decided 
 that she would ask Ida Fitzpatrick down to stay with her 
 next month, and give her her return ticket, and a summer 
 dress, and a new Her thoughts came to a startling full stop, 
 as round the corner of the house, she found herself face to 
 face with Mr. Hawkins. 
 
 She had quite made up her mind that when she next 
 saw him she would merely bow to him, but she had not 
 reckoned on the necessities of such an encounter as this, 
 and before she had time to collect herself she was shaking 
 hands with him and listening to his explanation of what had 
 brought him there. 
 
 "I met Miss Mullen after church yesterday," he said 
 awkwardly, " and she asked me to come over this afternoon. 
 I was just going out to look for her." 
 
 " Oh, really," said Francie, moving on towards the hall 
 door ; " she and Mr. Lambert are off in those fields there." 
 
 Hawkins stood looking irresolutely at her as she walked 
 up to the open door that in Miss Duffy's time had been 
 barricaded against all comers. She went in as unswervingly 
 as if she had already forgotten his existence, and then 
 yielding, according to his custom, to impulse, he followed 
 her. 
 
 She had already taken up a book, and was seated in a 
 chair by the window when he came in, and she did not even 
 lift her eyes at his entrance. He went over to the polished 
 centre table, and, opening a photograph book, turned over 
 a few of the leaves noisily. There was a pause, tense on 
 both sides as silence and self-consciousness could make it, 
 and broken only by the happy, persistent call of the cuckoo 
 
The Real Charlotte. 335 
 
 and the infant caws of the young rooks in the elms by the 
 gate. The photograph book was shut with a bang, and 
 Hawkins, taking his resolution in both hands, came across 
 the room, and stood in front of Francie. 
 
 " Look here ! * he said, with a strange mixture of anger 
 and entreaty in his voice ; " how much longer is this sort 
 of thing to go on ? Are you always going to treat me in 
 this sort of way ? " 
 
 " I don't know what you mean," answered Francie, look- 
 ing up at him with eyes of icy blue, and then down at her 
 book again. Her heart was beating in leaps, but of this 
 Hawkins was naturally not aware. 
 
 " You can't pretend not to know what I mean this sort 
 of rot of not speaking to me, and looking as if you had 
 never seen me before. I told you I was sorry and all that. 
 I don't know what more you want ! " 
 
 " I don't want ever to speak to you again." She turned 
 over a page of her book, and forced her eyes to follow 
 its lines. 
 
 " You know that's impossible ; you know you've got to 
 speak to me again, unless you want to cut me and kick up 
 a regular row. I don't know why you're going on like this. 
 It's awfully unfair, and it's awfully hard lines." Since his 
 visit to Rosemount, the conviction had been growing on 
 him that in marrying another man she had treated him 
 heartlessly, and he spoke with the fervour of righteous re- 
 sentment. 
 
 " Oh, that comes well from you ! " exclaimed Francie, 
 dropping the book, and sitting up with all her pent-in wrath 
 ablaze at last ; " you that behaved in a way anyone else 
 would be ashamed to think of ! Telling me lies from first 
 to last, and trying to make a fool of me It was a good 
 thing I didn't believe more than the half you said ! " 
 
 " I told you no lie," said Hawkins, trying to stand his 
 ground. " All I did was that I didn't answer your letters 
 because I couldn't get out of that accursed engagement, and 
 I didn't know what to say to you, and then the next thing I 
 knew was that you were engaged, without a word of ex- 
 planation to me or anything." 
 
 "And will you tell me what call there was for me to 
 explain anything to you ? " burst out Francie, looking, with 
 
336 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 the hot flash in her eyes, more lovely than he had ever 
 seen her ; "for all I knew of you, you were married already 
 to your English heiress Miss Coppers, or whatever her 
 name is I wonder at your impudenc^ in daring to say 
 things like that to me ! " The lift of her head, and the 
 splendid colour in her cheeks would have befitted any 
 angry goddess, and it is not surprising that Hawkins did not 
 take offence at the crudity of the expression, and thought 
 less of the brogue in which it was uttered than of the quiver 
 of the young voice that accused him. 
 
 " Look here," he said, for the second time, but with a 
 new and very different inflection, " don't let us abuse each 
 other any more. I couldn't answer your letters. I didn't 
 know what to say, except to tell you that I was a cad and a 
 beast, and I didn't see much good in doing that. Evi- 
 dently," he added, with a bitterness that was at least half 
 genuine, " it didn't make much difference to you whether I 
 did or not." 
 
 She did not reply, except by a glance that was intended 
 to express more than words could convey of her contempt 
 for him, but somewhere in it, in spite of her, he felt a touch 
 of reproach, and it was it that he answered as he said : 
 
 " Of course if you won't believe me you won't, and it 
 don't make much odds now whether you do or no ; 
 but I think if you knew how " he stammered, and then 
 went on with a rush "how infernally I've suffered over 
 the whole thing, you'd be rather sorry for me." 
 
 Francie shaped her lips to a thin and tremulous smile of 
 disdain, but her hands clutched each other under the book 
 in her lap with the effort necessary to answer him. " Oh, 
 yes, I am sorry for you ; I'd be sorry for anyone that would 
 behave the way you did," she said, with a laugh that would 
 have been more effective had it been steadier ; " but I can't 
 say you look as if you wanted my pity." 
 
 Hawkins turned abruptly away and walked towards the 
 door, and then, as quickly, came back to her side. 
 
 " They're coming across the lawn now," he said ; " before 
 they come, don't you think you could forgive me or just 
 say you do, anyhow. I did behave like a brute, but I never 
 thought you'd have cared. You may say the worst things 
 about me you can think of, if you'll only tell me you forgive 
 
The Real Charlotte. 33; 
 
 me." His voice broke on the last words in a way that gave 
 them irresistible conviction. 
 
 Francie glanced out of the window, and saw her husband 
 and Charlotte slowly approaching the house. " Oh, very 
 well," she said proudly, without turning her head ; " after 
 all there's nothing to forgive." 
 
 CHAPTER XLV 
 
 LAMBERT and Francie were both very silent as they drove 
 away from Gurthnamuckla. He was the first to speak. 
 
 " I've asked Charlotte to come over and stay with you 
 while I'm away next week I find I can't get through the 
 work in less than a fortnight, and I may be kept even longer 
 than that, because I've got to go to Dublin." 
 
 " Asked Charlotte ! " said Francie, in a tone of equal sur- 
 prise and horror. " What on earth made you do that ? " 
 
 " Because I didn't wish you should be left by yourself all 
 that time." 
 
 "I think you might have spoken to me first/' said 
 Francie, with deepening resentment. " I'd twice sooner be 
 left by myself than be bothered with that old cat." 
 
 Lambert looked quickly at her. He had come back to 
 the house with his nerves still strained from his fright about 
 the open gate, and his temper shaken by his financial diffi- 
 culties, and the unexpected discovery -of Hawkins in the 
 drawing-room with his wife had not been soothing. 
 
 " I don't choose that you should be left by yourself," he 
 said, in the masterful voice that had always, since her child- 
 hood, roused Francie's opposition. "You're a deal too 
 young to be left alone, and " with a voluntary softening of 
 his voice " and a deal too pretty, confound you ! " He 
 cut viciously with his whip at a long-legged greyhound of a 
 pig that was rooting by the side of the road. 
 
 " D'ye mean me or the pig ? " said Francie, with a laugh 
 that was still edged with defiance. 
 
 " I mean that I'm not going to have the whole country 
 prating about you, and they would if I left you here by 
 yourself." 
 
 " Very well, then, if you make me have Charlotte to stay 
 
 Y 
 
338 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 with me 111 give tearparties every day, and dinners and 
 balls every night. I'll make the country prate, I can tell 
 you, and the money fly too ! " 
 
 Her eyes were brighter than usual, and there was a fitful- 
 ness about her that stirred and jarred him, though he could 
 hardly tell why. 
 
 " I think I'll take you with me," he said, with the im- 
 potent wrath of a lover who knows that the pain of farewell 
 will be all on his side. " I won't trust you out of my sight." 
 
 " All right ! I'll go with you," she said, becoming half 
 serious. " I'd like to go." 
 
 They were going slowly up hill, and the country lay bare 
 and desolate in the afternoon sun, without a human being 
 in sight. Lambert took the reins in his right hand, and put 
 his arm round her. 
 
 " I don't believe you. I know you wouldn't care a hang 
 if I never came back kiss me ! " She lifted her face 
 obediently, and as her eyes met his she wondered at the un- 
 happiness in them. " I can't take you, my darling," he 
 whispered ; " I wish to God I could. I'm going to places 
 you couldn't stay at, and and it would cost too much." 
 
 " Very well ; never say I didn't make you a good offer," 
 she answered, her unconquerable eyes giving him a look 
 that told she could still flirt with her husband. 
 
 "Put my cloak on me, Roddy; the evening's getting 
 cold." 
 
 They drove on quickly, and Lambert felt the gloom 
 settling down upon him again. He hated going away and 
 leaving Francie ; he hated his financial difficulties, and 
 their tortuous, uncertain issues; and above all, he hated 
 Hawkins. He would have given the whole world to know 
 how things had been between him and Francie last year ; 
 anything would be less intolerable than suspicion. 
 
 The strip of grass by the roadside widened as they left 
 the rocky country, and the deep dints of galloping hoofs 
 became apparent on it. Lambert pointed to them with his 
 whip, and laughed contemptuously. 
 
 "If I had a thick-winded pony like your friend Mr. 
 Hawkins, I wouldn't bucket her up hill in that sort of 
 way. She'd do well enough if he had the sense to take her 
 easy ; but in all my knowledge of soldiers and I've seen a 
 
The Real Charlotte. 339 
 
 good few of them here now I've never seen a more self- 
 sufficient jackass in the matter of horses than Hawkins. I 
 wouldn't trust him with a donkey." 
 
 "You'd better tell him so," said Francie indifferently. 
 Lambert chose to suspect a sneer in the reply. 
 
 " Tell him so ! " he said hotly. " I'd tell him so pretty 
 smart, if I thought there was a chance of his getting outside 
 a horse of mine. But I think it'll be a long day before that 
 happens ! " 
 
 " Maybe he wouldn't thank you for one of your horses." 
 
 " No, I'll bet he wouldn't say thank you," said Lambert, 
 a thrill of anger darting to his brain. " He's a lad that'll 
 take all he can get, and say nothing about it, and chuck it 
 away to the devil when he's done with it." 
 
 " I'm sure I don't care what he does ! " exclaimed Francie, 
 with excusable impatience. " I wonder if he's able to 
 get into a passion about nothing, the way you're doing 
 now ! " 
 
 " It didn't look this afternoon as if you cared so little 
 about what he does ! " said Lambert, his breath coming 
 short. " May I ask if you knew he was coming, that you 
 were in such a hurry back to the house to meet him ? I 
 suppose you settled it when he came to see you on Satur- 
 day." 
 
 " Since you know all about it, there's no need for me to 
 contradict you ! " Francie flashed back. 
 
 One part of Lambert knew that he was making a fool of 
 himself, but the other part, which was unfortunately a hun- 
 dred times the stronger, drove him on. 
 
 " Oh, I daresay you found it very pleasant, talking over 
 old times," he retorted, releasing the thought at last like a 
 long caged beast j " or was he explaining how it was he got 
 tired of you ? " 
 
 Francie sat still and dumb ; the light surface anger startled 
 out of her in a moment, and its place taken by a suffocating 
 sense of outrage and cruelty. She did not know enough 
 of love to recognise it in this hideous disguise of jealousy ; 
 she only discerned the cowardly spitefulness, and it cut 
 down to that deep place in her soul, where, since childhood, 
 had lain her trust in him. She did not say a word, and 
 Lambert went on : 
 
34O The Real Charlotte, 
 
 " Oh, I see you are too grand to answer me ; I suppose 
 it's because I'm only your husband that you think I'm not 
 worth talking to." He gave the horse a lash of the whip, 
 and then chucked up its head as it sprang forward, making 
 the trap rock and jerk. The hateful satisfaction of taunt- 
 ing her about Hawkins was beginning to die in him like 
 drunkenness, and he dimly saw what it was going to cost 
 him. " You make me say these sort of things to you," he 
 broke out, seeing that she would not speak. " How can I 
 help it, when you treat me like the dirt under your feet, and 
 fight with me if I say a word to you that you don't like ? 
 I'd like to see the man that would stand it ! " 
 
 He looked down at her, and saw her head drooping for- 
 ward, and her hand up to her face. He could not say more, 
 as at that moment Mary Holloran was holding the gate open 
 for him to drive in ; and as he lifted his wife out of the trap 
 at the hall door, and saw the tears that she could no longer 
 hide from him, he knew that his punishment had begun, and 
 the iron entered into his soul. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVL 
 
 A FEW days afterwards Lambert started on his rent-collect- 
 ing tour. Peace of a certain sort was restored, complete in 
 outward seeming, but with a hidden flaw that both knew and 
 pretended to ignore. When Lambert sat by himself in the 
 smoking-carriage of the morning train from Lismoyle, with 
 the cold comfort of a farewell kiss still present with him, he 
 was as miserable and anxious a man as could easily have 
 been found. Charlotte had arrived the night before, and 
 with all her agreeability had contrived to remind him that 
 she expected a couple of hundred pounds on his return. 
 He could never have believed that she would have dunned 
 him in this way, and the idea occurred to him for the first 
 time that she was perhaps taking this method of paying him 
 out for what, in her ridiculous vanity, she might have ima- 
 gined to be his bad treatment of her. But none the less, it 
 was a comfort to him to think that she was at his house. 
 He did not say so to himself, but he knew that he could not 
 have found a better spy. 
 
The Real Charlotte. 341 
 
 Dislike, as has been said, was a sentiment that Francie 
 found great difficulty in cultivating. She conducted a feud 
 in the most slipshod way, with intervals of illogical friend- 
 ship, of which anyone with proper self-respect would have 
 been ashamed, and she consequently accepted, without 
 reservation, the fact that Charlotte was making herself 
 pleasant with a pleasantness that a more suspicious person 
 would have felt to be unwholesome. 
 
 Charlotte, upon whose birth so many bad fairies had shed 
 their malign influence, had had at all events one attraction 
 bestowed upon her, the gift of appreciation, and of being 
 able to express her appreciation a faculty that has been 
 denied to many good and Christian people. The evil spirit 
 may have torn her at sight of Francie enthroned at the head 
 of Roddy Lambert's table, but it did not come out of her in 
 any palpable form, nor did it prevent her from enjoying to 
 the utmost the change from the grease and smoke of Norry's 
 cooking, and the slothful stupidity of the Protestant orphan. 
 Charlotte was one of the few women for whom a good cook 
 will exert herself to make a savoury ; and Eliza Hackett 
 felt rewarded when the parlour-maid returned to the kitchen 
 with the intelligence that Miss Mullen had taken two help- 
 ings of cheese-souffle', and had sent her special compliments 
 to its constructor. Another of the undoubted advantages 
 of Rosemount was the chance it afforded Charlotte of paying 
 off with dignity and ease the long arrears of visits that the 
 growing infirmities of the black horse were heaping up 
 against her. It was supremely bitter to hear Francie 
 ordering out the waggonette as if she had owned horses and 
 carriages all her life, but she could gulp it down for the sake 
 of the compensating comfort and economy. In the long 
 tete-b-tetes that these drives involved, Charlotte made herself 
 surprisingly pleasant to her hostess. She knew every 
 scandal about every family in the neighbourhood, and 
 imparted them with a humour and an easy acquaintance 
 with the aristocracy that was both awe-inspiring and en- 
 couraging to poor Francie, whose heart beat fast with shyness 
 and conscious inferiority, as, card-case in hand, she preceded 
 Miss Mullen to Mrs. Ffolliott's or Mrs. Flood's drawing- 
 room. It modified the terror of Mrs. Flood's hooked nose 
 to remember that her mother had been a Hebrew barmaid, 
 
342 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 and it was some consolation to reflect that General 
 Ffolliott's second son had had to leave his regiment for 
 cheating at cards, when she became aware that she alone, 
 among a number of afternoon callers at Castle Ffolliott, 
 had kept on her gloves during tea. 
 
 In every conversation with Charlotte it seemed to Francie 
 that she discovered, as if by accident, some small but 
 disagreeable fact about her husband. He had been refused 
 by such and such a girl ; he had stuck so and so with a 
 spavined horse ; he had taken a drop too much at the hunt 
 ball ; and, in a general way he owed the agency and his 
 present position in society solely to the efforts of Miss 
 Mullen and her father. 
 
 Francie accepted these things, adding them to her 
 previous store of disappointment in Roddy, with the phil- 
 osophy that she had begun to learn at Albatross Villa, and 
 that life was daily teaching her more of. They un- 
 consciously made themselves into a background calculated 
 to give the greatest effect to a figure that now occupied a 
 great deal of her thoughts. 
 
 It was at Mrs. Waller's house that she first met Hawkins 
 after her encounter with him at Gurthnamuckla. He came 
 into the room when it was almost time for her to face the 
 dreadful ordeal of leave-taking, and she presently found 
 herself talking to him with considerably less agitation than 
 she had felt in talking about Paris to Miss Waller. The 
 memory of their last meeting kept her eyes from his, but it 
 made the ground firm under her feet, and in the five 
 minutes before she went away she felt that she had effectually 
 shown him the place she intended him to occupy, and that 
 he thoroughly understood that conversation with her was 
 a grace, and not a right. The touch of deference and 
 anxiety in his self-assured manner were as sweet to her as 
 the flowers strewed before a conqueror, and laid themselves 
 like balm on the wound of her husband's taunt. Some day 
 Roddy would see for himself the sort of way things were 
 between her and Mr. Hawkins, she thought, as she drove 
 down the avenue, and unconsciously held her head so high 
 and looked so brilliant, that Charlotte, with that new-born 
 amiability that Francie was becoming accustomed to, 
 complimented her upon her colour, and declared that, after 
 
The Real Charlotte. 343 
 
 Major Waller's attentions, she would have to write to 
 Roderick and decline further responsibility as a chaperone. 
 
 They drove to Bruff two or three days afterwards, to return 
 the state visit paid by Pamela on her mother's behalf, and, 
 during some preliminary marketing in Lismoyle, they came 
 upon Hawkins walking through the town in the Rosemount 
 direction, with an air of smartness and purpose about him 
 that bespoke an afternoon call 
 
 " I was just going to see you," he said, looking rather 
 blank. 
 
 " We're on our way to Bruff," replied Francie, too resolved 
 on upholding her dignity to condescend to any conventional 
 regrets. 
 
 Mr. Hawkins looked more cheerful, and observing that 
 as he also owed a visit at Bruff this would be a good day to 
 pay it, was turning back to the barracks for his trap, when 
 Miss Mullen intervened with almost childlike impulsiveness. 
 
 " I declare now, it vexes my righteous soul to think of 
 your getting out a horse and trap, with two seats going a* 
 begging here. It's not my carriage, Mr. Hawkins, or I 
 promise you you should have one of them." 
 
 Hawkins looked gratefully at her, and then uncertainly 
 at Francie. 
 
 " He's welcome to come if he likes," said Francie frigidly, 
 thinking with a mixture of alarm and satisfaction of what 
 Roddy would say if he heard of it. 
 
 Hawkins waited for no further invitation, and got into 
 the waggonette. A trait of character as old as humanity 
 was at this time asserting itself, with singular freshness and 
 force, in the bosom of Mr. Gerald Hawkins. He had 
 lightly taken Francie's heart in his hand, and as lightly 
 thrown it away, without plot or premeditation; but now 
 that another man had picked it up and kept it for his own, 
 he began to see it as a thing of surpassing value. He could 
 have borne with a not uninteresting regret the idea of Francie 
 languishing somewhere in the suburbs of Dublin, and would 
 even, had the chance come in his way, have flirted with her 
 in a kind and consolatory manner. But to see her here, 
 prosperous, prettier than ever, and possessing the supreme 
 attraction of having found favour in someone else's eyes, 
 was a very different affair. The old glamour took him 
 
344 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 again, but with tenfold force, and, while he sat in the 
 waggonette and talked to his ancient foe, Miss Mullen, with 
 a novel friendliness, he gnawed the ends of his moustache 
 in the bitterness of his soul because of the coldness of the 
 eyes that were fascinating him. 
 
 It was a bright and blowy afternoon, with dazzling masses 
 of white cloud moving fast across the blue, and there was 
 a shifting glimmer of young leaves in the Bruff avenue, and 
 a gusty warmth of fragrance from lilacs and laurel blossoms 
 on either side. As this strangely compounded party of 
 visitors drove up to the hall door they caught sight of 
 Christopher going down the lawn towards the boat-house, 
 and in answer to a call from Mr. Hawkins, he turned and 
 came back to meet them. He was only on his way to the 
 boat-house to meet Cursiter, he explained, and he was the 
 only person at home, but he hoped that they would, none 
 the less, come in and see him. Hawkins helped Francie 
 out of the carriage, giving her a hand no less formal than 
 that which she gave him. She recognised the formality, and 
 was not displeased to think that it was assumed in obedience 
 to her wish. 
 
 They all strolled slowly on towards the boat-house, 
 Hawkins walking behind with Miss Mullen, Francie in front 
 with her host. It was not her first meeting with him since 
 her return to Lismoyle, and she found it quite easy to talk 
 with him of her travels, and of those small things that make 
 up the sum of ordinary afternoon conversation. She had 
 come to believe now that she must have been mistaken on 
 that afternoon when he had stood over her in the Tally Ho 
 drawing-room and said those unexpected things to her 
 things that, at the time, seemed neither ambiguous nor 
 Platonic. He was now telling her, in the quietly hesitating 
 voice that had always seemed to her the very height of good 
 breeding, that the weather was perfect, and that the lake 
 was lower than he had ever known it at that time of year, 
 with other like commonplaces, and though there was some- 
 thing wanting in his manner that she had been accustomed 
 to, she discerned none of the awkwardness that her experi- 
 ence had made her find inseparable from the rejected state. 
 
 There was no sign of Captain Cursiter or his launch 
 when they reached the pier, and, after a fruitless five minutes 
 
The Real Charlotte. 345 
 
 of waiting, they went on, at Christopher's suggestion, to see 
 the bluebells in the wood that girdled the little bay of Bruff. 
 Before they reached the gate of the wood, Miss Mullen had 
 attached herself to Christopher, having remarked, with 
 engaging frankness, that Mr. Hawkins could only talk to her 
 about Lismoyle, and she wanted Sir Christopher to tell her 
 of the doings of the great world ; and Francie found herself 
 following them with Hawkins by her side. The walk turned 
 inwards and upwards from the lake, climbing, by means of 
 a narrow flight of moss-grown stone steps, till it gained the 
 height of about fifty feet above the water, Walking there, 
 the glitter of the lake came up brokenly to the eye, through 
 the beech-tree branches, that lay like sprays of maiden- 
 hair beneath them; and over the hill and down to the 
 water's edge and far away among the grey beech stems, the 
 bluebells ran like a blue mist through all the wood. Their 
 perfume rose like incense about Francie and her companion 
 as they walked slowly, and ever more slowly, along the path. 
 The spirit of the wood stole into their veins, and a pleasure 
 that they could not have explained held them in silence that 
 they were afraid to break. 
 
 Hawkins was the first to make a diffident comment. 
 
 u They're ripping, aren't they? They're a great deal 
 better than they were last year." 
 
 " I didn't see them last year." 
 
 " No, I know you didn't," he said quickly ; " you didn't 
 come to Lismoyle till the second week in June." 
 
 " You seem to remember more about it than I do," said 
 Francie, still maintaining her attitude of superiority. 
 
 " I don't think I'm likely to forget it," he said, turning 
 and looking at her. 
 
 She looked down at the ground with a heightening colour 
 and a curl of the lip that did not come easily. If she found 
 it hard to nurse her anger against Charlotte, it was thrice 
 more difficult to harden herself to the voice to which one 
 vibrating string in her heart answered in spite of her. 
 
 " Oh, there's nothing people can't forget if they try ! " she 
 said, with a laugh. " I always find it much harder to re- 
 member ! " 
 
 " But people sometimes succeed in doing things they 
 don't like," said Hawkins pertinaciously. 
 
346 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 " Not if they don't want to," replied Francie, holding her 
 own, with something of her habitual readiness. 
 
 Hawkins' powers of repartee weakened a little before this 
 retort. " No, I suppose not," he said, trying to make up 
 by bitterness of tone for want of argument. 
 
 Francie was silent, triumphantly silent, it seemed to him, 
 as he walked beside her and switched off the drooping heads 
 of the bluebells with his stick. He had experiences that 
 might have taught him that this appetite for combat, this 
 determination to trample on him, was a more measurable 
 thing than the contempt that will not draw a sword ; but he 
 was able to think of nothing except that she was unkind to 
 him, and that she was prettier now than he had ever seen 
 her. He was so thoroughly put out that he was not aware 
 of any awkwardness in the silence that had progressed, un- 
 broken, for a minute or two. It was Francie to whom it 
 was apparently most trying, as, at length, with an obvious 
 effort at small talk, she said : 
 
 " I suppose that's Captain Cursiter coming up the lake ? " 
 indicating, through an opening in the branches, a glimpse 
 of a white funnel and its thong of thinly streaming vapour ; 
 " he seems as fond of boating as ever." 
 
 " Yes, I daresay he is," said Hawkins, without pretend- 
 ing any interest, real or polite, in the topic. He was in the 
 frame of mind that lies near extravagance of some kind, 
 whether of temper or sentiment, and, being of a disposition 
 not versed in self-repression, he did not attempt diplomacy. 
 He looked sulkily at the launch, and then, with a shock of 
 association, he thought of the afternoon that he and Francie 
 had spent on the lake, and the touch of unworthiness that 
 there was in him made him long to remind her of her sub- 
 jugation. 
 
 " Are you as fond of boating as as you were when we 
 ran aground last year?" he said, and looked at her 
 daringly. 
 
 He was rewarded by seeing her start perceptibly'and turn 
 her head away, and he had the grace to feel a little ashamed 
 of himself. Francie looked down the bluebell slope till 
 her eyes almost ached with the soft glow of colour, conscious 
 that every moment of delay in answering told against her, 
 but unable to find the answer. The freedom and impert- 
 
The Real Charlotte. 347 
 
 inence of the question did not strike her at all ; she only 
 felt that he was heartlessly trying to humiliate her. 
 
 "I'd be obliged to you, Mr. Hawkins," she said, her 
 panting breath making her speak with extreme difficulty, " if 
 you'd leave me to walk by myself." 
 
 Before she spoke he knew that he had made a tremendous 
 mistake, and, as she moved on at a quickened pace, he felt 
 he must make peace with her at any price. 
 
 " Mrs. Lambert," he said, with a gravity and deference 
 which he had never shown to her before, "is it any use to 
 beg your pardon? I didn't know what I was saying I 
 hardly know now what I did say but if it made you angry 
 or or offended you, I can only say I'm awfully sorry." 
 
 " Thank you, I don't want you to say anything," she 
 answered, still walking stiffly on. 
 
 "If it would give you any pleasure, I swear I'll promise 
 never to speak to you again ! " Hawkins continued ; " shall 
 I go away now?" His instinct told him to risk the 
 question. 
 
 " Please yourself. It's nothing to me what you do." 
 
 " Then I'll stay" 
 
 Following on what he said, like an eldritch note of 
 exclamation, there broke in the shrill whistle of the Serpo- 
 lette as she turned into the bay of Bruff, and an answering 
 hail from Christopher rose to them, apparently from the 
 lower path by the shore of the lake. 
 
 " That's Cursiter/' said Hawkins irritably ; " I suppose 
 we shall have to go back now." 
 
 She turned, as if mechanically accepting the suggestion, 
 and, in the action, her eyes passed by him with a look that 
 was intended to have as little reference to him as the gaze 
 of a planet in its orbit, but which, even in that instant, was 
 humanised by avoidance. In the space of that glance, he 
 knew that his pardon was attainable, if not attained, but he 
 had cleverness enough to retain his expression of gloomy 
 compunction. 
 
 It was quite true that Francie's anger, always pitiably 
 short-lived, had yielded to the flattery of his respect. Every 
 inner, unformed impulse was urging her to accept his 
 apology, when three impatient notes from the whistle of 
 the steam-launch came up through the trees, and seemed to 
 
348 The Real Charlotte, 
 
 open a way for her to outside matters from the narrow stress 
 of the moment. 
 
 " Captain Cursiter seems in a great hurry about some- 
 thing," she said, her voice and manner conveying suffici- 
 ently well that she intended to pass on with dignity from the 
 late dispute. " I wonder what he wants." 
 
 " Perhaps we've got the route," said Hawkins, not sorry 
 to be able to remind her of the impending calamity of his 
 departure ; " I shouldn't be a bit surprised." 
 
 Thfy walked down the flight of stone steps, and reached 
 the gate of the wood in silence. Hawkins paused with his 
 hand on the latch. 
 
 " Look here, when am I going to see you again ? " he 
 said. 
 
 " I really don't know," said Francie, with recovered ease. 
 She felt the wind blowing in on her across the silver scales 
 of the lake, and saw the sunshine flashing on Captain 
 Cursiter's oars as he paddled himself ashore from the 
 launch, and her spirits leaped up in " the inescapable joy 
 of spring." " I should think anyone that goes to church 
 to-morrow will see me there." 
 
 Her glance veered towards his cloudy, downcast face, and 
 an undignified desire to laugh came suddenly upon her. 
 He had always looked so babyish when he was cross, and it 
 had always made her feel inclined to laugh. Now that she 
 was palpably and entirely the conqueror, the wish for further 
 severity had died out, and the spark of amusement in her 
 eye was recklessly apparent when Hawkins looked at her. 
 
 His whole expression changed in a moment. " Then 
 we're friends ? " he said eagerly. 
 
 Before any answer could be given, Christopher and 
 Charlotte came round a bend in the lower path, and even 
 in this moment Francie wondered what it was that should 
 cause Charlotte to drop her voice cautiously as she neared 
 them. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVIL 
 
 IT was very still inside the shelter of the old turf quay at 
 Bruff. The stems of the lilies that curved up through its 
 brown-golden depths were visible almost down to the black 
 
The Real Charlotte. 349 
 
 mud out of which their mystery of silver and gold was born ; 
 and, while the water outside moved piquantly to the breeze, 
 nothing stirred it within except the water spiders, who were 
 darting about, pushing a little ripple in front of them, and 
 finding themselves seriously inconvenienced by the pieces of 
 broken rush and the sodden fragments of turf that perpetu- 
 ally stopped their way. It had rained and blown very hard 
 all the day before, and the innermost corners of the tiny 
 harbour held a motionless curve of foam, yellowish brown, 
 and flecked with the feathers of a desolated moorhen's nest. 
 
 Civilisation at Bruff had marched away from the turf 
 quay. The ruts of the cart-track were green from long 
 disuse, and the willows had been allowed to grow across it, 
 as a last sign of superannuation. In old days every fire at 
 Bruff had been landed at the turf quay from the bogs at the 
 other side of the lake ; but now, since the railway had come 
 to Lismoyle, coal had taken its place. It was in vain that 
 Thady, the turf-cutter, had urged that turf was a far hand- 
 somer thing about a gentleman's place than coal. The last 
 voyage of the turf boat had been made, and she now lay, 
 grey from rottenness and want of paint, in the corner of the 
 miniature dock that had once been roofed over and formed 
 a boat-house. Tall, jointed reeds, with their spiky leaves 
 and stiff stems, stood out in the shallow water, leaning 
 aslant over their own reflections, and, further outside, green 
 rushes grew thickly in long beds, the homes of dabchicks, 
 coots, and such like water people. Standing on the brown 
 rock that formed the end of the quay, the spacious sky was 
 so utterly reproduced in the lake, cloud for cloud, deep for 
 deep, that it only required a little imagination to believe 
 oneself floating high between two atmospheres, The young 
 herons, in the fir trees on Curragh Point, were giving utter- 
 ance to their meditations on things in general in raucous 
 monosyllables, and Charlotte Mullen, her feet planted firmly 
 on two of the least rickety stones of the quay, was continu- 
 ing a conversation that had gone on one-sidedly for some 
 time. 
 
 " Yes, Sir Christopher, my feeling for your estate is like 
 the feeling of a child for the place where he was reared ; it 
 is the affection of a woman whose happiest days were passed 
 with her father in your estate office 1 " 
 
350 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 The accurate balance of the sentence and its nasal 
 cadence showed that Charlotte was delivering herself of a 
 well-studied peroration. Her voice clashed with the stillness 
 as dissonantly as the clamour of the young herons. Her 
 face was warm and shiny, and Christopher looked away from 
 it, and said to himself that she was intolerable. 
 
 " Of course yes I understand " he answered stam- 
 meringly, her pause compelling him to speak ; " but these 
 are very serious things to say n 
 
 " Serious ! " Charlotte dived her hand into her pocket 
 to make sure that her handkerchief was within hail. " D'ye 
 think, Sir Christopher, I don't know that well ! I that have 
 lain awake crying every night since I heard of it, not know- 
 ing how to decide between me affection for me friend and 
 my duty to the son of my dear father's old employer ! * 
 
 " I think anyone who makes charges of this kind," inter- 
 rupted Christopher coldly, " is bound to bring forward some- 
 thing more definite than mere suspicion." 
 
 Charlotte took her hand out of her pocket without the 
 handkerchief, and laid it for a moment on Christopher's 
 arm. 
 
 " My dear Sir Christopher, I entirely agree with you," she 
 said in her most temperate, ladylike manner, "and I 
 am prepared to place certain facts before you, on whose 
 accuracy you may perfectly rely, although circumstances 
 prevent my telling you how I learned them." 
 
 The whole situation was infinitely repugnant to Chris- 
 topher. He would himself have said that he had not nerve 
 enough to deal with Miss Mullen ; and joined with this, and 
 his innate and overstrained dislike of having his affairs 
 discussed, was the unendurable position of conniving with 
 her at a treachery. Little as he liked Lambert, he sided with 
 him now with something more than a man's ordinary resent- 
 ment against feminine espionage upon another man. He 
 was quite aware of the subdued eagerness in Charlotte's 
 manner, and it mystified while it disgusted him ; but he was 
 also aware that nothing short of absolute flight would check 
 her disclosures. He could do nothing 'now but permit 
 himself the single pleasure of staring over her head with a 
 countenance barren of response to her histrionic display of 
 expression. 
 
The Real Charlotte. 351 
 
 5* You ask me for something more definite than mere sus- 
 picion," continued Charlotte, approaching one of the 
 supremest gratifications of her life with full and luxurious 
 recognition. " I can give you two facts, and if, on investi- 
 gation, you find they are not correct, you may go to 
 Roderick Lambert, and tell him to take an action for libel 
 against me ! I daresay you know that a tenant of yours, 
 named James M'Donagh commonly called Shamus Bawn 
 recently got the goodwill of Knocklara, and now holds it 
 in addition to his father's farm, which he came in for last 
 month." Christopher assented. " Jim M'Donagh paid one 
 hundred and eighty pounds fine on getting Knocklara. I 
 ask you to examine your estate account, and you will see 
 that the sum credited to you on that transaction is no more 
 than seventy." 
 
 " May I ask how you know this ? " Christopher turned 
 his face towards her for a moment as he asked the question, 
 and encountered, with even more aversion than he had ex- 
 pected, her triumphing eyes. 
 
 " I'm not at liberty to tell you. All I say is, go to Jim 
 M'Donagh, and ask him the amount of his fine, and see if 
 he won't tell you just the same sum that I'm telling you 
 now." 
 
 Captain Cursiter, at this moment steering the Serpolettc 
 daintily among the shadows of Bruff Bay, saw the two in- 
 congruous figures on the turf quay, one short, black, and 
 powerful, the other tall, white, and passive, and wondered, 
 through the preoccupation of crawling to his anchorage, 
 what it was that Miss Mullen was holding forth to Dysart 
 about, in a voice that came to him across the water like the 
 gruff barking of a dog. He thought, too, that there was an 
 almost ship-wrecked welcome in the shout with which 
 Christopher answered his whistle, and was therefore sur- 
 prised to see him remain where he was, apparently enthralled 
 by Miss Mullen's conversation, instead of walking round to 
 meet him at the boat-house pier. 
 
 Charlotte had, in fact, by this time, compelled Christopher 
 to give her his whole attention. As he turned towards her 
 again, he admitted to himself that the thing looked rather 
 serious, though he determined, with the assistance of a good 
 deal of antagonistic irritability, to keep his opinion to himself. 
 
352 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 This feeling was uppermost as he said : " I have never had 
 the least reason to feel a want of confidence in Mr. Lambert, 
 Miss Mullen, and I certainly could not discredit him by 
 going privately to M'Donagh to ask him about the fine." 
 
 " It's a pity all unfaithful stewards haven't as confiding a 
 master as you, Sir Christopher," said Charlotte, with a 
 laugh. She felt Christopher's attitude towards her, as a 
 man in armour may have felt the arrows strike him, and no 
 more, and it came easily to her to laugh. " However," she 
 went on, correcting her manner quickly, as she saw a very 
 slight increase of colour in Christopher's face, " the burden 
 of proof does not lie with James M'Donagh. Last 
 November, as you may possibly remember, my name 
 made its first appearance on your rent-roll, as the tenant 
 of Gurthnamuckla, and in recognition of that honour," 
 Charlotte felt that there was an academic polish about her 
 sentences that must appeal to a University man " I wrote 
 your agent a cheque for one hundred pounds, which was 
 duly cashed some days afterwards." She altered her posi- 
 tion, so that she could see his face better, and said deliber- 
 ately : " Not one penny of that has been credited to the 
 estate ! This I know for a fact." 
 
 " Yes," said Christopher, after an uncomfortable pause, 
 " that's very very curious, but, of course until I know a 
 little more, I can't give any opinion on the matter. I think, 
 perhaps, we had better go round to meet Captain Cursiter " 
 
 Charlotte interrupted him with more violence than she 
 had as yet permitted to escape. 
 
 " If you want to know more, I can tell you more, and 
 plenty more! For the last year and more, Roddy Lambert's 
 been lashing out large sums of ready money beyond his 
 income, and I know his income to the penny and the farth- 
 ing ! Where did he get that money from ? I ask you. 
 What paid for his young horses, and his new dog-cart, and 
 his new carpets, yes ! and his honeymoon trip to Paris ? I 
 ask you what paid for all that? It wasn't his first wife's, 
 money paid for it, I know that for a fact, and it certainly 
 wasn't the second wife's ! " 
 
 She was losing hold of herself ; her gestures were of the 
 sort that she usually reserved for her inferiors, and the 
 corners of her mouth bubbled like a snail Christopher 
 
The Real Charlotte. 353 
 
 looked at her, and began to walk away. Charlotte followed 
 him, walking unsteadily on the loose stones, and inwardly 
 cursing his insolence as well as her own forgetfulness of the 
 method she had laid down for the interview. He turned 
 and waited for her when he reached the path, and had time 
 to despise himself for not being able to conceal his feelings 
 from a woman so abhorrent and so contemptible. 
 
 " I am er obliged for your information," he said stiffly. 
 In spite of his scorn for his own prejudice, he would not 
 gratify her by saying more. 
 
 " You will forgive me, Sir Christopher," replied Charlotte 
 with an astonishing resumption of dignity, " if I say that 
 that is a point that is quite immaterial to me. I require no 
 thanks. I felt it to be my duty to tell you these painful 
 facts, and what I suffer in doing it concerns only myself." 
 
 They walked on in silence between the lake and the 
 wood, with the bluebells creeping .outwards to their feet 
 through the white beech stems, and as the last turn of the 
 path brought them in sight of Francie and Hawkins, 
 Charlotte spoke again : 
 
 " You'll remember that all this is in strict confidence, Si/ 
 Christopher." 
 
 " I shall remember," said Christopher curtly. 
 
 An hour later, Pamela, driving home with her mother, 
 congratulated herself, as even the best people are prone to 
 do, when she saw on the gravel-sweep the fresh double 
 wheel tracks that indicated that visitors had come and gone. 
 She felt that she had talked enough for one afternoon dur- 
 ing the visit to old Lady Eyrecourt, whose deaf sister had 
 fallen to her share, and she did not echo her mother's regret 
 at missing Miss Mullen and her cousin. She threw down 
 the handful of cards on the hall table again, and went with 
 a tired step to look for Christopher in the smoking-room, 
 where she found him with Captain Cursiter, the latter in 
 the act of taking his departure. The manner of her greeting 
 showed that he was an accustomed sight there, and, as a 
 matter of fact, since Christopher's return Captain Cursiter 
 had found himself at Bruff very often. He had discovered 
 that it was, as he expressed it, the only house in the country 
 where the women let him alone. Lady Dysart had expressed 
 the position from another point of view, when she had de- 
 
354 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 plored to Mrs. Gascogne Pamela's " hopeless friendliness " 
 towards men, and Mrs. Gascogne had admitted that there 
 might be something discouraging to a man in being treated 
 as if he were a younger sister. 
 
 This unsuitable friendliness was candidly apparent in 
 Pamela's regret when she heard that Cursiter had come to 
 Bruff with the news that his regiment was to leave Ireland 
 for Aldershot in a fortnight. 
 
 " Here's Captain Cursiter trying to stick me with the 
 launch at an alarming reduction, as the property of an 
 officer going abroad," said Christopher. " He wants to 
 take advantage of my grief, and he won't stay and dine here 
 and let me haggle the thing out comfortably." 
 
 " I'm afraid I haven't time to stay," said Cursiter rather 
 cheerlessly. " I've got to go up to Dublin to-morrow, and 
 I'm very busy. I'll come over again if I may when I 
 get back." He felt all the awkwardness of a self-conscious 
 man in the prominence of making a farewell that he is 
 beginning to find more unpleasant than he had expected. 
 
 " Oh, yes ! indeed, you must come over again," said 
 Pamela, in the soft voice that was just Irish enough for 
 Saxons of the more ignorant sort to fail to distinguish, save 
 in degree, between it and Mrs. Lambert's Dublin brogue. 
 
 It remained on Captain Cursiter's ear as he stalked down 
 through the shrubberies to the boat-house, and, as he 
 steamed round Curragh Point, and caught the sweet, turfy 
 whiff of the Irish air, he thought drearily of the arid glare 
 of Aldershot, and, without any apparent connection of ideas, 
 he wondered if the Dysarts were really coming to town next 
 month. 
 
 Not long after his departure Lady Dysart rustled into the 
 smoking-room in her solemnly sumptuous widow's dress. 
 
 "Is he gone ? " she breathed in a stage whisper, pausing 
 on the threshold for a reply. 
 
 "No; he's hiding behind the door," answered Christopher; 
 "he always does when he hears you coming." When 
 Christopher was irritated, his method of showing it was 
 generally so subtle as only to satisfy himself; it slipped 
 through the wide and generous mesjj of his mother's under- 
 standing without the smallest friction. 
 
 " Nonsense, Christopher ! " she said, not without a furtive 
 
The Real Charlotte. 355 
 
 glance behind the door. " What a visitation you must have 
 had from the whole set ! Had they anything interesting to 
 say for themselves ? Charlotte Mullen generally is a great 
 alleviation." 
 
 "Oh yes," replied her son, examining the end of his 
 cigarette with a peculiar expression, " she she alleviated 
 about as much as usual ; but it was Cursiter who brought 
 the news." 
 
 " I can't imagine Captain Cursiter so far forgetting him- 
 self as to tell any news," said Lady Dysart ; " but perhaps he 
 makes an exception in your favour." 
 
 "They're to go to Aldershot in a fortnight," said 
 Christopher. 
 
 " You don't say so ! " exclaimed his mother, with an ir- 
 repressible look at Pamela, who was sitting on the floor in 
 the window, taking a thorn out of Max's spatulate paw. 
 " In a fortnight ? I wonder how Mr. Hawkins will like 
 that ? Evelyn said that Miss Coppard told her the marri- 
 age was to come off when the regiment went back to 
 England." 
 
 Christopher grunted unsympathetically, and Pamela con- 
 tinued her researches for the thorn. 
 
 " Well," resumed Lady Dysart, " I, for one, shall not re- 
 gret them. Selfish and second-rate ! " 
 
 u Which is which ? " asked Christopher, eliminating any 
 tinge of interest or encouragement from his voice. He was 
 quite aware that his mother was in this fashion avenging the 
 slaughter of the hope that she had secretly nourished about 
 Captain Cursiter, and, being in a perturbed frame of mind, 
 it annoyed him. 
 
 " I think your friend is the most self-centred, ungenial 
 man I have ever known," replied Lady Dysart, in sonorous 
 denunciation, " and if Mr. Hawkins is not second-rate, his 
 friends are, which comes to the same thing ! And, by the 
 by, how was it that he went away before Captain Cursiter ? 
 Did not they come together ? " 
 
 " Miss Mullen and Mrs. Lambert gave him a lift," said 
 Christopher, uncommunicatively ; " I believe they overtook 
 him on his way here." 
 
 Lady Dysart meditated, with her dark eyebrows drawn 
 into a frown. 
 
356 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 " I think that girl will make a very great mistake if she 
 begins a flirtation with Mr. Hawkins again," she said pre- 
 sently ; " there has been quite enough talk about her 
 already in connection with her marriage." Lady Dysart nn- 
 tied her bonnet strings as if with a need of more air, and 
 flung them back over each shoulder. In the general con- 
 trariety of things, it was satisfactory to find an object so un- 
 deniably deserving of reprobation as the new Mrs. Lambert. 
 " I call her a thorough adventuress ! " she continued. " She 
 came down here, determined to marry some one, and as 
 Mr. Hawkins escaped from her, she just snatched at the 
 next man she could find ! " 
 
 Pamela came over and sat down on the arm of her 
 mother's chair. " Now, mamma," she said putting her arm 
 round Lady Dysart's crape-clad shoulder, " you can't deny 
 that she knew all about the Dublin clergy and went to 
 Sunday-school regularly for ten years, and she guessed two 
 lights of an acrostic for you." 
 
 " Yes, two that happened to be slangy ! No, my dear 
 child, I admit that she is very pretty, but, as I said before, 
 she has proved herself to be nothing but an adventuress, 
 Everyone in the country has said the same thing." 
 
 " I can scarcely imagine anyone less like an adventuress," 
 said Christopher, with the determined quietness by which he 
 sometimes mastered his stammer. 
 
 His mother looked at him with the most unaffected surprise. 
 11 And I can scarcely imagine anyone who knows less about 
 the matter than you ! " she retorted. " Oh, my dear boy, 
 don't smoke another of those horrid things," as Christopher 
 got up abruptly and began to fumble rather aimlessly in a 
 cigarette-box on the chimney-piece, " I'm sure you've 
 smoked more than is good for you. You look quite white 
 already." 
 
 He made no reply, and his mother's thoughts reverted to 
 the subject under discussion. Suddenly a little cloud of 
 memory began to appear on her mental horizon. Now that 
 she came to think of it, had not Kate Gascogne once 
 mentioned Christopher's name to her in preposterous con- 
 nection with that of the present Mrs. Lambert ? 
 
 " Let me tell you 1 " she exclaimed, her deep-set eyes 
 glowing with the triumphant effort of memory, "that people 
 
The Real Charlotte. 357 
 
 said she did her utmost to capture you I and I can very well 
 believe it of her ; a grievous waste of ammunition on her 
 part, wasn't it, Pamela? Though it did not result in an 
 engagementl" she added, highly pleased at being able to 
 press a pun into her argument. 
 
 " Oh, I think she spared Christopher," struck in Pamela 
 with a conciliatory laugh ; " ' Poor is the conquest of the 
 timid hare/ you know ! " She was aware of something 
 portentously rigid in her brother's attitude, and would have 
 given much to have changed the conversation, but the situa- 
 tion was beyond her control. 
 
 " I don't think she would have thought it such a poor 
 conquest," said Lady Dysart indignantly ; " a girl like that, 
 accustomed to attorneys' clerks and commercial travellers 
 she'd have done anything short of suicide for such a 
 chance ! " 
 
 Christopher had stood silent during this discussion. He 
 was losing his temper, but he was doing it after his fashion, 
 slowly and almost imperceptibly. The pity for Mr. Lam- 
 bert's wife, that had been a primary result of Charlotte's 
 indictment, flamed up into quixotism, and every word his 
 mother said was making him more hotly faithful to the time 
 when his conquest had been complete. 
 
 " I daresay it will surprise you to hear that I gave her the 
 chance, and she didn't take it," he said suddenly. 
 
 Lady Dysart grasped the arms of her chair, and then fell 
 back into it. 
 
 "F^did!" 
 
 "Yes, I did," replied Christopher, beginning to walk 
 towards the door. He knew he had done a thing that was 
 not only superfluous, but savoured repulsively of the pseudo- 
 heroic, and the attitude in whicn he had placed himself was 
 torture to his reserve. " This great honour was offered to 
 her," he went on, taking refuge in lame satire, " last August, 
 unstimulated by any attempts at suicide on her part, and 
 she refused it. I I think it would be kinder if you put 
 her down as a harmless lunatic, than as an adventuress, as 
 far as I am concerned." He shut the door behind him as 
 he finished speaking, and Lady Dysalt was left staring at 
 her daughter, complexity of emotions making speech an 
 idle thing. 
 
358 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVIII. 
 
 THE question, ten days afterwards, to anyone who had 
 known all the features of the case, would have been whether 
 Francie was worth Christopher's act of championing. 
 
 At the back of the Rosemount kitchen-garden the ground 
 rose steeply into a knoll of respectable height, where grew 
 a tangle of lilac bushes, rhododendrons, seringas, and yellow 
 broom. A gravel path wound ingratiatingly up through 
 these, in curves artfully devised by Mr. Lambert to make 
 the most of the extent and the least of the hill, and near 
 the top a garden-seat was sunk in the bank, with laurels 
 shutting it in on each side, and a laburnum " showering 
 golden tears " above it. Through the perfumed screen of 
 the lilac bushes in front unromantic glimpses of the roof of 
 the house were obtainable eyesores to Mr. Lambert, who 
 had concentrated all his energies on hiding everything 
 nearer than the semi-circle of lake and distant mountain 
 held in an opening cut through the rhododendrons at the 
 corner of the little plateau on which the seat stood. With- 
 out the disturbance of middle distance the eye lay at ease 
 on the far-off struggle of the Connemara mountains, and on 
 a serene vista of Lough Moyle ; a view that enticed forth, as 
 to a playground, the wildest and most foolish imaginations, 
 and gave them elbow-room ; a world so large and remote 
 that it needed the sound of wheels on the road to recall the 
 existence of uie petty humanities of Lismoyle. 
 
 Francie and Hawkins were sitting there on the afternoon 
 of the day on which Lambert was expected to come home, 
 and as the sun, that had stared in at them through the 
 opening in the rhododendrons when they first went there, 
 slid farther round, their voices sank in unconscious accord 
 with the fading splendours of the afternoon, and their 
 silences seemed momently more difficult to break. They 
 were nearing the end of the phase that had begun in the 
 wood at Bruff, impelled to its verge by the unspoken know- 
 ledge that the last of the unthinking, dangerous days was 
 dying with the sun, and that a final parting was looming up 
 beyond. Neither knew for certain the mind of the other, 
 or how they had dropped into this so-called friendship that 
 
The Real Charlotte. 359 
 
 in half a dozen afternoons had robbed all other things of 
 reality, and made the intervals between their meetings like 
 a feverish dream. Francie did not dare to think much 
 about it ; she lived in a lime-light glow that surrounded her 
 wherever she went, and all the world outside was dark. 
 He was going in a fortnight, in ten days, in a week ; that 
 was the only fact that the future had held for her since 
 Captain Cursiter had met them with the telegram in his 
 hand on the lake shore at Bruff. She forgot her resolu- 
 tions ; she forgot her pride ; and before she reached home 
 that afternoon the spell of the new phase, that was the old, 
 only intensified by forgiveness, was on her. She shut her 
 eyes, and blindly gave house-room in her heart to the 
 subtle passion that came in the garb of an old friend, with 
 a cant about compassion on its lips, and perfidious promises 
 that its life was only for a fortnight. 
 
 To connect this supreme crisis of a life with such a 
 person as Mr. Gerald Hawkins may seem incongruous ; 
 but Francie was not aware of either crisis or incongruity. 
 All she knew of was the enthralment that lay in each prosaic 
 afternoon visit, all she felt, the tired effort of conscience 
 against fascination. Her emotional Irish nature, with all 
 its frivolity and recklessness, had also, far down in it, an 
 Irish girl's moral principle and purity ; but each day she 
 found it more difficult to hide the truth from him ; each day 
 the under-currents of feeling drew them helplessly nearer to 
 each other. Everything was against her. Lambert's 
 business had, as he expected, taken him to Dublin, and 
 kept him there; Cursiter, like most men, was chary of 
 active interference in another man's affairs, whatever his 
 private opinion might be ; and Charlotte, that guardian of 
 youth, that trusty and vigilant spy, sat in her own room 
 writing interminable letters, or went on long and com- 
 plicated shopping expeditions whenever Hawkins came to 
 the house. 
 
 On this golden, still afternoon, Francie strayed out soon 
 after lunch, half dazed with unhappiness and excitement. 
 To-night her husband would come home. In four days 
 Hawkins would have gone, as eternally, so far as she was 
 concerned, as if he were dead ; he would soon forget her, 
 she thought, as she walked to and fro among the blossoming 
 
360 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 apple trees in the kitchen-garden. Men forgot very easily, 
 and, thanks to the way she had tried her best to make him 
 think she didn't care, there was not a word of hers to bring 
 him back to her. She hated herself for her discretion ; her 
 soul thirsted for even one word of understanding, that would 
 be something to live upon in future days of abnegation, 
 when it would be nothing to her that she had gained his 
 respect, and one tender memory would be worth a dozen 
 self-congratulations. 
 
 She turned at the end of the walk and came back again 
 under the apple trees ; the ground under her feet was white 
 with fallen blossoms ; her fair hair gleamed among the 
 thick embroidery of the branches, and her face was not 
 shamed by their translucent pink and white. At a little 
 distance Eliza Hackett, in a starched lilac calico, was 
 gathering spinach, and meditating no doubt with comfort- 
 able assurance on the legitimacy of Father Heffernan's 
 apostolic succession, but outwardly the embodiment of solid 
 household routine and respectability. As Francie passed 
 her she raised her decorous face from the spinach-bed with 
 a question as to whether the trout would be for dinner or 
 for breakfast ; the master always fancied fish for his break- 
 fast, she reminded Francie. Eliza Hackett's tone was 
 distant, but admonitory, and it dispelled in a moment the 
 visions of another now impossible future that were holding 
 high carnival before Francie's vexed eyes. The fetter made 
 itself coldly felt, and following came the quick pang of 
 remorse at the thought of the man who was wasting on her 
 the best love he had to give. Her change of mood was 
 headlong, but its only possible expression was trivial to 
 absurdity, if indeed any incident in a soul's struggle can be 
 called trivial. Some day, further on in eternity, human 
 beings will know what their standards of proportion and 
 comparison are worth, and may perhaps find the glory of 
 some trifling actions almost insufferable. 
 
 She gave the necessary order, and hurrying into the house 
 brought out from it the piece of corduroy that she was 
 stitching in lines of red silk as a waistcoat for her husband, 
 and with a childish excitement at the thought of this 
 expiation, took the path that led to the shrubbery on the 
 hill. As she reached its first turn she hesitated and stopped. 
 
The Rial Charlotte. 361 
 
 an idea of further and fuller renunciation occurring to her. 
 Turning, she called to the figure stooping among the glossy 
 rows of spinach to desire that the parlour-maid should say 
 that this afternoon she was not at home. Had Eliza 
 Hackett then and there obeyed the order, it is possible that 
 many things would have happened differently. But fate is 
 seldom without a second string to her bow, and even if 
 Francie's message had not been delayed by Eliza Hackett's 
 determination to gather a pint of green gooseberries before 
 she went in, it is possible that Hawkins would, none the less 
 have found his way to the top of the shrubbery, where 
 Francie was sewing with the assiduity of Penelope. It was 
 about four o'clock when she heard his step coming up the 
 devious slants of the path, and she knew as she heard it 
 that, in spite of all her precautions, she had expected him. 
 His manner and even his look had nothing now in them of 
 the confident lover of last year ; his flippancy was gone, and 
 when he began by reproaching her for having hidden from 
 him, his face was angry and wretched, and he spoke like a 
 person who had been seriously and unjustly hurt. He was 
 more in love than he had ever been before, and he was 
 taking it badly, like a fever that the chills of opposition were 
 driving back into his system. 
 
 She made excuses as best she might, with her eyes bent 
 upon her work. 
 
 " I might have been sitting in the drawing-room now," 
 he said petulantly ; " only that Miss Mullen had seen you 
 going off here by yourself, and told me I'd better go and 
 find you." 
 
 An unreasoning fear came over Francie, a fear as of 
 something uncanny. 
 
 "Let us go back to the house," she said; "Charlotte 
 will be expecting us." She said it to contradict the thought 
 that had become definite for the first time. " Come ; I'm 
 going in." 
 
 Hawkins did not move. " I suppose you forget that 
 this is Wednesday, and that I'm going on Saturday," he re- 
 plied dully. " In any case you'll not be much good to 
 Charlotte. She's gone up to pack her things. She told 
 me herself she was going to be very busy, as she had to 
 start at six o'clock." 
 
362 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 Francie leaned back, and realised that now she had no 
 one to look to but herself, and happiness and misery fought 
 within her till her hands trembled as she worked. 
 
 Each knew that this was, to all intents and purpose^ 
 their last meeting, and their consciousness was charged to 
 brimming with unexpressed farewell She talked of in- 
 different subjects ; of what Aldershot would be like, of what 
 Lismoyle would think of the new regiment, of the trouble 
 that he would have in packing his pictures, parrying, with a 
 weakening hand, his efforts to make every subject personal; 
 and all the time the laburnum drooped in beautiful despair 
 above her, as if listening and grieving, and the cool-leaved 
 lilac sent its fragrance to mingle with her pain, and to stir 
 her to rebellion with the ecstasy of spring-time. The 
 minutes passed barrenly by, and, as has been said, the 
 silences became longer and more clinging, and the thoughts 
 that filled them made each successive subject more bare 
 and artificial. At last Hawkins got up, and walking to the 
 opening cut in the shrubs, stood, with his hands in his 
 pockets, looking out at the lake and the mountains. 
 Francie stitched on ; it seemed to her that if she stopped 
 she would lose her last hold upon herself ; she felt as if her 
 work were a talisman to remind her of all the things that 
 she was in peril of forgetting. When, that night, she took 
 up the waistcoat again to work at it, she thought that her 
 heart's blood had gone into the red stitches. 
 
 It was several minutes before Hawkins spoke. "Francie," 
 he said, turning round and speaking thickly, " are you 
 going to let me leave you in this in this kind of way ? 
 Have you realised that when I go on Saturday it's most 
 likely it's pretty certain, in fact that we shall never see 
 each other again ? " 
 
 "Yes, I have," she said, after a pause of a second or two. 
 She did not say that for a fortnight her soul had beaten it- 
 self against the thought, and that to hear it in words was as 
 much as her self-command could bear. 
 
 " You seem to care a great deal ! " he said violently ; 
 " you're thinking of nothing but that infernal piece of work, 
 that I loathe the very sight of. Don't you think you could 
 do without it for five minutes, at all events ? " 
 
 She let her hands drop into her lap, but made no other reply. 
 
The Real Charlotte. 363 
 
 u You're not a bit like what you used to be. You seem 
 to take a delight in snubbing me and shutting me up. I 
 must say, I never thought you'd have turned into a prig ! " 
 He felt this reproach to be so biting that he paused upon it 
 to give it its full effect. " Here I am going to England in 
 four days, and to India in four months, and it's ten to one 
 if I ever come home again. I mean to volunteer for the 
 very first row that turns up. But it's just the same to you, 
 you won't even take the trouble to say you're sorry." 
 
 " If you had taken the trouble to answer my letters last 
 autumn, you wouldn't be saying these things to me now," 
 she said, speaking low and hurriedly. 
 
 " I don't believe it ! I believe if you had cared about 
 me then you wouldn't treat me like this now." 
 
 " I did care for you," she said, while the hard-held tears 
 forced their way to her eyes ; " you made me do it, and 
 then you threw me over, and now you're trying to put the 
 blame on me ! " 
 
 He saw the glisten on her eyelashes, and it almost took 
 from him the understanding of what she said. 
 
 "Francie," he said, his voice shaking, and his usually 
 confident eyes owning the infection of her tears, "you 
 might forget that. I'm miserable. I can't bear to leave 
 you ! " He sat down again beside her, and, catching her 
 hand, kissed it with a passion of repentance. He felt it 
 shrink from his lips, but the touch of it had intoxicated him, 
 and suddenly she was in his arms. 
 
 For a speechless instant they clung to each other ; her 
 head dropped to his shoulder, as if the sharp release from 
 the tension of the last fortnight had killed her, and the 
 familiar voice murmured in her ear : 
 
 M Say it to me say you love me." 
 
 " Yes I do my dearest " she said, with a moan that 
 was tragically at variance with the confession. " Ah, why 
 do you make me so wicked ! " She snatched herself away 
 from him, and stood up, trembling all over. " I wish I had 
 never seen you I wish I was dead." 
 
 " I don't care what you say now," said Hawkins, spring- 
 ing to his feet, " you've said you loved me, and I know you 
 mean it. Will you stand by it ? " he went on wildly. " If 
 you'll only say the word Til chuck everything overboard 
 
364 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 I can't go away from you like this. Once Fm in England 
 I can't get back here, and if I did, what good would it be 
 to me ? He'd never give us a chance of seeing each other, 
 and we'd both be more miserable than we are, unless 
 unless there was a chance of meeting you in Dublin or 
 somewhere ? " He stopped for an instant. Francie 
 mutely shook her head. " Well, then, I shall never see you." 
 
 There was silence, and the words settled down into both 
 their hearts. He cursed himself for being afraid of her, she, 
 whom he had always felt to be his inferior, yet when he 
 spoke it was with an effort. 
 
 " Come away with me out of this come away with me 
 for good and all ! What's the odds ? We can't be more 
 than happy ! n 
 
 Francie made an instinctive gesture with her hand while 
 he spoke, as if to stop him, but she said nothing, and 
 almost immediately the distant rush and rattle of a train 
 came quietly into the stillness. 
 
 " That's his train ! " she exclaimed, looking as startled as 
 if the sound had been a sign from heaven. " Oh, go 
 away ! He mustn't meet you coming away from here." 
 
 " I'll go if you give me a kiss," he answered drunkenly. 
 His arms were round her again, when they dropped to his 
 side as if he had been shot. 
 
 There was a footstep on the path immediately below the 
 lilac bushes, and Charlotte's voice called to Francie that she 
 was just starting for home and had come to make her 
 adieux. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIX 
 
 CHRISTOPHER DYSART drove to Rosemount next morning 
 to see Mr. Lambert on business. He noticed Mrs. Lambert 
 standing at the drawing-room window as he drove up, but 
 she left the window before he reached the hall door, and he 
 went straight to Mr. Lambert's study without seeing her 
 again. 
 
 Francie returned listlessly to the seat that she had sprung 
 from with a terrified throb of the heart at the thought that 
 the wheels might be those of Hawkins' trap, and, putting 
 her elbow on the arm of the chair, rested her forehead on 
 
The Real Charlotte. 365 
 
 her hand ; her other hand drooped over the side of the 
 chair, holding still in it the sprig of pink hawthorn that her 
 husband had given her in the garden an hour before. Her 
 attitude was full of languor, but her brain was working at its 
 highest pressure, and at this moment she was asking herself 
 what Sir Christopher would say when he heard that she had 
 gone away with Gerald. She had seen him vaguely as one 
 of the crowd of contemptuous or horror-stricken faces that 
 had thronged about her pillow in the early morning, but his 
 opinion had carried no more restraining power than that of 
 Aunt Tish, or Uncle Robert, or Charlotte. Nothing had 
 weighed with her then ; the two principal figures in her life 
 contrasted as simply and convincingly as night and day, and 
 like night and day, too, were the alternative futures that 
 were in her hand to choose from. Her eyes were open to 
 her wrong-doing, but scarcely to her cruelty ; it could not be 
 as bad for Roddy, she thought, to live without her as for 
 her to stay with him and think of Gerald in India, gone 
 away from her for ever. Her reasoning power was easily 
 mastered, her conscience was a thing of habit, and not fitted 
 to grapple with this turbulent passion. She swept towards 
 her ruin like a little boat staggering under more sail than 
 she can carry. But the sight of Christopher, momentary 
 as it was, had startled for an instant the wildness of her 
 thoughts ; the saner breath of the outside world had come 
 with him, and a touch of the self-respect that she had 
 always gained from him made her press her hot forehead 
 against her hand, and realise that the way of transgressors 
 would be hard. 
 
 She remained sitting there, almost motionless, for a long 
 time. She had no wish to occupy herself with anything ; 
 all the things about her had already the air of belonging to 
 a past existence ; her short sovereignty was over, and even 
 the furniture that she had, a few weeks ago, pulled about 
 and rearranged in the first ardour of possession seemed to 
 look at her in a decorous, clannish way, as if she were 
 already an alien. At last she heard the study door open, 
 and immediately afterwards, Christopher's dog-cart went 
 down the drive. It occurred to her that now, if ever, was 
 the time to go to her husband and see whether, by diplo- 
 macy, she could evade the ride that he had asked her to 
 
366 The Real Charlotte 
 
 take with him that afternoon. Hawkins had sent her a 
 note saying that he would come to pay a farewell visit, a 
 cautiously formal note that anyone might have seen, but 
 that she was just as glad had not been seen by her husband, 
 and at all hazards she must stay in to meet him. She got 
 up and went to the study with a nervous colour in her 
 cheeks, glancing out of the hall window as she passed it, 
 with the idea that the threatening grey of the sky would be 
 a good argument for staying at home. But if it rained, 
 Roddy might stay at home too, she thought, and that would 
 be worse than anything. That was her last thought as she 
 went into the study. 
 
 Lambert was standing with his hands in his pockets, 
 looking down at the pile of papers and books on the table, 
 and Francie was instantly struck by something unwonted in 
 his attitude, something rigid and yet spent, that was very 
 different from his usual bearing. He looked at her with 
 heavy eyes, and going to his chair let himself drop into it ; 
 then, still silently, he held out his hand to her. She thought 
 he looked older, and that his face was puffy and unattrac- 
 tive, and in the highly-strung state of her nerves she felt a 
 repugnance to him that almost horrified her. It is an un- 
 fortunate trait of human nature that a call for sympathy 
 from a person with whom sympathy has been lost has a 
 repellent instead of an attractive power, and if a strong 
 emotion does not appear pathetic, it is terribly near the 
 ludicrous. In justice to Francie it must be said that her 
 dominant feeling as she gave Lambert her hand and was 
 drawn down on to his knee was less repulsion than a sense 
 of her own hypocrisy. 
 
 " What's the matter, Roddy?" she asked, after a second or 
 two of silence, during which she felt the labouring of his breath. 
 
 " I'm done for," he said, "that's what's the matter." 
 
 " Why ! what do you mean ? " she exclaimed, turning her 
 startled face half towards him, and trying not to shrink as 
 his hot breath struck on her cheek. 
 
 " I've lost the agency." 
 
 " Lost the agency ! " repeated Francie, feeling as though 
 the world with all the things she believed to be most solid 
 were rocking under her feet. " Do you mean he's after 
 dismissing you ? " 
 
The Real Charlotte. 36; 
 
 Lambert moved involuntarily, from the twitch of pain that 
 the word gave him. It was this very term that Lismoyle 
 would soon apply to him, as if he were a thieving butler or 
 a drunken coachman. 
 
 " That's about what it will come to," he said bitterly. 
 " He was too damned considerate to tell me so to-day, but 
 he's going to do it. He's always hated me just as I have 
 hated him, and this is his chance, though God knows what's 
 given it to him." 
 
 "You're raving!" cried Francie incredulously; "what 
 on earth would make him turn you away ? " She felt that 
 her voice was sharp and unnatural, but she could not make 
 it otherwise. The position was becoming momently more 
 horrible from the weight of unknown catastrophe, the sight 
 of her husband's suffering and the struggle to sympathise 
 with it, and the hollow disconnection between herself and 
 everything about her. 
 
 " I can't tell you all in a minute," he said with difficulty. 
 " Wouldn't you put your arm round my neck, Francie, as if 
 you were sorry for me ? You might be sorry for me, and 
 for yourself too. We're ruined. Oh my God 1 " he groaned, 
 " we're ruined ! " 
 
 She put her arm round his neck, and pity, and a sense 
 that it was expected of her, made her kiss his forehead. At 
 the touch of her lips his sobs came suddenly and dread- 
 fully, and his arms drew her convulsively to him. She lay 
 there helpless and dry-eyed, enduring a wretchedness that 
 in some ways was comparable to his own, but never becom- 
 ing merged in the situation, never quite losing her sense of 
 repulsion at his abasement. 
 
 " I never meant to touch a farthing of his in the long 
 run " he went on, recovering himself a little; "I'd have 
 paid him back every half-penny in the end but, of course, 
 he doesn't believe that. What does he care what I say ! " 
 
 u Did you borrow money from him, or what was it ? " 
 asked Francie gently. 
 
 " Yes, I did," replied Lambert, setting his teeth ; " but I 
 didn't tell him. I was eaten up with debts, and I had to 
 to borrow some of the estate money." It was anguish to 
 lower himself from the pedestal of riches and omnipotence 
 on which he had always posed to her, and he spoke stumb- 
 
368 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 lingly. " It's very hard to explain these things to you it's 
 it's not so unusual as you'd think and then, before I'd 
 time to get things square again, some infernal mischief- 
 maker has set him on to ask to see the books, and put him 
 up to matters that he'd never have found out for himself." 
 
 " Was he angry ? " she asked, with the quietness that was 
 so unlike her. 
 
 "Oh, I don't know I don't care " moving again rest- 
 lessly in his chair \ " he's such a rotten, cold-blooded devil, 
 you can't tell what he's at." Even at this juncture it gave 
 him pleasure to make little of Christopher to Francie. " lie 
 asked me the most beastly questions he could think of, in 
 that d d stammering way of his. He's to write to me in 
 two or three days, and I know well what he'll say," he went 
 on with a stabbing sigh ; " I suppose he'll have it all over 
 the country in a week's time. He's been to the bank and 
 seen the estate account, and that's what's done me. I 
 asked him plump and plain if he hadn't been put up to it, 
 and he didn't deny it, but there's no one could have known 
 what was paid into that account but Baker or one of the 
 clerks, and they knew nothing about the fines I mean 
 they couldn't understand enough to tell him anything. But 
 what does it matter who told him. The thing's done now, 
 and I may as well give up." 
 
 " What will you do ? " said Francie faintly. 
 
 " If it wasn't for you I think I'd put a bullet through my 
 head," he answered, his innately vulgar soul prompting him 
 to express the best thought that was in him in conventional 
 heroics, "but I couldn't leave you, Francie I couldn't 
 leave you " he broke down again " it was for our honey- 
 moon I took the most of the money " He could not go 
 on, and her whole frame was shaken by his sobs. 
 
 " Don't, Roddy, don't cry," she murmured, feeling cold 
 and sick. 
 
 " He knows I took the money," Lambert went on in- 
 coherently; "I'll have to leave the country I'll sell 
 everything " he got up and began to walk about the 
 room " I'll pay him damn him I'll pay him every 
 farthing. He sha'n't have it to say he was kept waiting for 
 his money ! He shall have it this week ! " 
 
 " But how will you pay him if you haven't the money ? * 
 
The Real Charlotte. 369 
 
 said Francie, with the same lifelessness of voice that had 
 characterised her throughout. 
 
 " I'll borrow the money I'll raise it on the furniture , 
 I'll send the horses up to Sewell's, though God knows what 
 price I'll get for them this time of year, but I'll manage it 
 somehow. I'll go out to Gurthnamuckla this very afternoon 
 about it. Charlotte's got a head on her shoulders " He 
 stood still, and the idea of borrowing from Charlotte herself 
 took hold of him. He felt that such trouble as this must 
 command her instant sympathy, and awaken all the warmth 
 of their old friendship, and his mind turned towards her 
 stronger intelligence with a reliance that was creditable to 
 his ideas of the duties of a friend. " I could give her a bill 
 of sale on the horses and furniture," he said to himself. 
 
 His eyes rested for the first time on Francie, who had 
 sunk into the chair from which he had risen, and was look 
 ing at him as if she did not see him. Her hair was ruffled 
 from lying on his shoulder, and her eyes were wild and 
 fixed, like those of a person who is looking at a far-off 
 spectacle of disaster and grief. 
 
 CHAPTER L. 
 
 THE expected rain had not come, though the air was heavy 
 and damp with the promise of it. It hung unshed, above 
 the thirsty country, looking down gloomily upon the dusty 
 roads, and the soft and straight young grass in the meadows \ 
 waiting for the night, when the wind would moan and cry 
 for it, and the newborn leaves would shudder in the dark at 
 its coming. 
 
 At three o'clock Francie was sure that the afternoon 
 would be fine, and soon afterwards she came downstairs in 
 her habit, and went into the drawing-room to wait for the 
 black mare to be brought to the door. She was going to 
 ride towards Gurthnamuckla to meet Lambert, who had 
 gone there some time before; he had made Francie promise 
 to meet him on his way home, and she was going to keep 
 her word. He had become quite a different person to her 
 since the morning, a person who no longer appealed to her 
 admiration or her confidence, but solely and distressingly 
 to her pity. She had always thought of him as invincible, 
 
 2 A 
 
370 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 self-sufficing, and possessed of innumerable interests besides 
 herself; she knew him now as dishonest and disgraced, 
 and miserable, stripped of all his pretensions and vanities, 
 but she cared for him to-day more than yesterday. It was 
 against her will that his weakness appealed to her; she 
 would have given worlds for a heart that did not smite her 
 at its claim, but her pride helped out her compassion. She 
 told herself that she could not let people have it to say that 
 she ran away from Roddy because he was in trouble. 
 
 She felt chilly, and she shivered as she stood by the fire, 
 whose unseasonable extravagance daily vexed the righteous 
 soul of Eliza Hackett. Hawkins* note was in her hand, 
 and she read it through twice while she waited ; then, as 
 she heard the sound of wheels on the gravel, she tore it in 
 two and threw it into the fire, and, for the second time that 
 morning, ran to the window. 
 
 It was Christopher Dysart again. He saw her at the 
 window and took off his cap, and before he had time to 
 ring the bell, she had opened the hall door. She had, he 
 saw at once, been crying, and her paleness, and the tell-tale 
 heaviness of her eyes, contrasted pathetically with the 
 smartness of her figure in her riding habit, and the boyish 
 jauntiness of her hard felt hat. 
 
 "Mr. Lambert isn't in, Sir Christopher," she began at 
 once, as if she had made up her mind whom he had come 
 to see ; " but won't you come in ? " 
 
 "Oh thank you I I haven't much time I merely 
 wanted to speak to your husband," stammered Christopher. 
 
 " Oh, please come in," she repeated, " I want to speak to 
 you." Her eyes suddenly filled with tears, and she turned 
 quickly from him and walked towards the drawing-room. 
 
 Christopher followed her with the mien of a criminal. 
 He felt that he would rather have been robbed twenty times 
 over than see the eyes that, in his memory, had always been 
 brilliant and undefeated, avoiding his as if they were afraid 
 of him, and know that he was the autocrat before whom she 
 trembled. She remained standing near the middle of the 
 room, with one hand on the corner of the piano, whose 
 gaudy draperies had, even at this juncture, a painful sub- 
 effect upon Christopher ; her other hand fidgeted restlessly 
 with a fold of the habit that she was holding up, and it was 
 evident that whatever her motive had been in bringing him 
 
The Real Charlotte. 371 
 
 in, her courage was not equal to it. Christopher waited for 
 her to speak, until the silence became unendurable. 
 
 " I intended to have been here earlier," he said, saying 
 anything rather than nothing, " but there was a great deal 
 to be got through at the Bench to-day, and Fve only just 
 got away. You know I'm a magistrate now, and indiffer- 
 ently minister justice " 
 
 " I'm glad I hadn't gone out when you came," she 
 interrupted, as though, having found a beginning, she could 
 not lose a moment in using it. " I wanted to say that if 
 you if you'll only give Roddy a week's time he'll pay you. 
 He only meant to borrow the money, like, and he thought 
 he could pay you before ; but, indeed, he says he'll pay you 
 in a week." Her voice was low and full of bitterest 
 humiliation, and Christopher wished that before he had ar- 
 raigned his victim, and offered him up as an oblation to his 
 half-hearted sense of duty, he had known that his infirmity 
 of purpose would have brought him back three hours after- 
 wards to offer the culprit a way out of his difficulties. It 
 would have saved him from his present hateful position, and 
 what it would have saved her was so evident, that he turned 
 his head away as he spoke, rather than look at her. 
 
 (< I came back to tell your husband that that he could 
 arrange things in in some such way," he said, as guiltily 
 and awkwardly as a boy. " I'm sorry more sorry than I 
 can say that he should have spoken to you about it. Of 
 course, that was my fault. I should have told him then 
 what I came to tell him now." 
 
 " He's gone out now to see about selling his horses and 
 the furniture," went on Francie, scarcely realising all of 
 Christopher's leniency in her desire to prove Lambert's 
 severe purity of action. Her mind was not capable of more 
 than one idea one, that is, in addition to the question that 
 had monopolised it since yesterday afternoon, and Chris- 
 topher's method of expressing himself had never been easily 
 understood by her. 
 
 " Oh, he mustn't think of doing that ! " exclaimed Chris- 
 topher, horrified that she should think him a Shylock, de- 
 manding so extreme a measure of restitution ; " it wasn't 
 the actual money question that that we disagreed about ; 
 he can take as long as he likes about repaying me. In fact 
 in fact you can tell him from me that he said something 
 
372 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 this morning about giving up the agency. Well, I I 
 should be glad if he would keep it." 
 
 He had stultified himself now effectually ; he knew that 
 he had acted like a fool, and he felt quite sure that Mr. 
 Lambert's sense of gratitude would not prevent his holding 
 the same opinion. He even foresaw Lambert's complacent 
 assumption that Francie had talked him over, but he could 
 not help himself. The abstract justice of allowing the 
 innocent to suffer with the guilty was beyond him ; he for- 
 got to theorise, and acted on instinct as simply as a savage. 
 She also had acted on instinct. When she called him in 
 she had nerved herself to ask for reprieve, but she never 
 hoped for forgiveness, and as his intention penetrated the 
 egotism of suffering, the thought leaped with it that, if 
 Roddy were to be let off, everything would be on the same 
 footing that it had been yesterday evening. A blush that 
 was incomprehensible to Christopher swept over her face ; 
 the grasp of circumstances relaxed somewhat, and a jangle 
 of unexplainable feelings confused what self-control she had 
 left. 
 
 " You're awfully good/' she began half hysterically. " I 
 always knew you were good ; I wish Roddy was like you ! 
 Oh, I wish I was like you ! I can't help it I can't help 
 crying ; you were always too good to me, and I never was 
 worth it ! " She sat down on one of the high stiff chairs, 
 for which her predecessor had worked beaded seats, and 
 hid her eyes in her handkerchief. " Please don't talk to 
 me ; please don't say anything to me" She stopped 
 suddenly. " What's that ? Is that anyone riding up ? " 
 
 "No. It's your horse coming round from the yard," 
 said Christopher, taking a step towards the window, and trying 
 to keep up the farce of talking as if nothing had happened. 
 
 " My horse ! " she exclaimed, starting up. ' ' Oh, yes, I 
 must go and meet Roddy. I mustn't wait any longer." 
 She began, as if unconscious of Christopher's presence, to 
 look for the whip and gloves that she had laid down. He 
 saw them before she did, and handed them to her. 
 
 "Good-bye," he said, taking her cold, trembling hand, 
 11 1 must go too. You will tell your husband that it's 
 it's all right." 
 
 " Yes. I'll tell him. I'm going to meet him. I must 
 start now," she answered, scarcely seeming to notice what 
 
The Real Charlotte. 373 
 
 he said, and withdrawing her hand from his, she began 
 hurriedly to button on her gloves. 
 
 Christopher did not wait for further dismissal, but when 
 his hand was on the door, her old self suddenly woke. 
 
 " Look at me letting you go away without telling you a 
 bit how grateful I am to you ! " she said, with a lift of her 
 tear-disfigured eyes that was like a changeling of the look 
 he used to know ; " but don't you remember what Mrs. 
 Baker said about me, that 'you couldn't expect any 
 manners from a Dublin Jackeen.' ? " 
 
 She laughed weakly, and Christopher, stammering more 
 than ever in an attempt to say that there was nothing to, be 
 grateful for, got himself out of the room. 
 
 After he had gone, Francie gave herself no time to think. 
 Everything was reeling round her as she went out on to the 
 steps, and even Michael the groom thought to himself that 
 if he hadn't the trap to wash, he'd put the saddle on the 
 chestnut and folly the misthress, she had that thrimulous 
 way with her when he put the reins into her hands, and 
 only for it was the mare she was riding he wouldn't see her 
 go out by herself. 
 
 It was the first of June, and the gaiety of the spring was 
 nearly gone. The flowers had fallen from the hawthorn, 
 the bluebells and primroses were vanishing as quietly as 
 they came, the meadows were already swarthy, and the 
 breaths of air that sent pale shimmers across them, were full 
 of the unspeakable fragrance of the ripening grass. Under 
 the trees, near Rosemount, the shadowing greenness had 
 saturated the daylight with its gloom, but out among the 
 open pastures and meadows the large grey sky seemed 
 almost bright, and, in the rich sobriety of tone, the red 
 cattle were brilliant spots of colour. 
 
 The black mare and her rider were now on thoroughly 
 confidential terms, and, so humiliatingly interwoven are soul 
 and body, as the exercise quickened the blood in her 
 veins, Francie's incorrigible youth rose up, and while it 
 brightened her eyes and drove colour to her cheeks, it 
 whispered that somehow or other happiness might come to 
 her. She rode fast till she reached the turn to Gurthna- 
 muckla, and there, mindful of her husband's injunctions, 
 that she was not to ride up to the house, but to wait for him 
 on the road, she relapsed into a walk. 
 
374 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 As she slackened her pace, all the thoughts that she had 
 been riding away from came up with her again. What 
 claim had Roddy on her now ? She had got him out of 
 his trouble, and that was the most he could expect her to do 
 for him. He hadn't thought much about the trouble he 
 was bringing on her ; he never as much as said he was 
 sorry for the disgrace it would be to her. Why should she 
 break her heart for him and Gerald's heart too? as she 
 said Hawkins' name to herself, her hands fell into her lap, 
 and she moaned aloud. Every step the mare was taking 
 was carrying her farther from him, but yet she could not 
 turn back. She was changed since yesterday ; she had seen 
 her husband's soul laid bare, and it had shown her how 
 tremendous were sin and duty ; it had touched her slumber- 
 ing moral sense as well as her kindness, and though she 
 rebelled she did not dare to turn back. 
 
 It was not till she heard a pony's quick gallop behind her, 
 and looking back, saw Hawkins riding after her at full 
 speed, that she knew how soon she was to be tested. She 
 had scarcely time to collect herself before he was pulling up 
 the pony beside her, and had turned a flushed and angry 
 face towards her. 
 
 " Didn't you get my note ? Didn't you know I was com- 
 ing ? " he began in hot remonstrance. Then, seeing in a 
 moment how ill and strange she looked, "What's the 
 matter ? Has anything happened ? " 
 
 " Roddy came home yesterday evening," she said, with 
 her eyes fixed on the mare's mane. 
 
 " Well, I know that," interrupted Hawkins. " Do you 
 mean that he was angry ? Did he find out anything about 
 me ? If he did see the note I wrote you, there was nothing 
 in that." Francie shook her head. "Then it's nothing? 
 It's only that you've been frightened by that brute," he said, 
 kicking his pony up beside the mare, and trying to look 
 into Francie's downcast eyes. " Don't mind him. It won't 
 be for long." 
 
 " You mustn't say that," she said hurriedly. " I was very 
 wrong yesterday, and I'm sorry for it now." 
 
 " I know you're not ! " he burst out, with all the con- 
 viction that he felt. " You can't unsay what you said to 
 me yesterday. I sat up the whole night thinking the thing 
 over and thinking of you, and at last I thought of a fellow I 
 
The Real Charlotte. 375 
 
 know out in New Zealand, who told me last year I ought to 
 chuck the army and go out there." He dropped his reins 
 on the pony's neck, and took Francie's hand. " Why 
 shouldn't we go there together, Francie? I'll give up 
 everything for you, my darling 1 " 
 
 She feebly tried to take her hand away, but did not reply. 
 
 " I've got three hundred a year of my own, and we can 
 do ourselves awfully well on that out there. We'll always 
 have lots of horses, and it's a ripping climate and and I 
 love you, and I'll always love you ! " 
 
 He was carried away by his own words, and, stooping his 
 head, he kissed her hand again and again. 
 
 Every pulse in her body answered to his touch, and when 
 she drew her hand away, it was with an effort that was more 
 than physical. 
 
 " Ah ! stop, stop," she cried. " I've changed I didn't 
 mean it." 
 
 " Didn't mean what ? " demanded Hawkins, with his light 
 eyes on fire. 
 
 " Oh, leave me alone," she said, turning her distracted 
 face towards him. " I'n* nearly out of my mind as it is. 
 What made you follow me out here ? I came out so as 
 I wouldn't see you, and I'm going to meet Roddy now." 
 
 Hawkins' colour died slowly down to a patchy white. 
 " What do you think it was that made me follow you ? Do 
 you want to make me tell you over again what you know 
 already ? " She did not answer, and he went on, trying to 
 fight against his own fears by speaking very quietly and 
 rationally. " I don't know what you're at, Francie. I 
 don't believe you know what you're saying. Something 
 must have happened, and it would be fairer to tell me what 
 it is, than to drive me distracted in this sort of way." 
 
 There was a pause of several seconds, and he was framing 
 a fresh remonstrance when she spoke. 
 
 "Roddy's in great trouble. I wouldn't leave him," 
 she said, taking refuge in a prevarication of the exact truth. 
 
 Something about her told Hawkins that things were 
 likely to go hard with him, and there was something, too, 
 that melted his anger as it rose ; but her pale face drew him 
 to a height of passion that he had not known before. 
 
 " And don't you think anything about me ? " he said with 
 a breaking voice. "Are you ready to throw me overboard 
 
376 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 just because he's in trouble, when you know he doesn't care 
 for you a tenth part as much as I do ? Do you mean to 
 tell me that you want me to go away, and say good-bye to 
 you for ever ? If you do, I'll go, and if you hear I've gone 
 to the devil, you'll know who sent me." 
 
 The naive selfishness of this argument was not perceived 
 by either. Hawkins felt his position to be almost noble, 
 and did not in the least realise what he was asking Francie 
 to sacrifice for him. He had even forgotten the idea that 
 had occurred to him last night, that to go to New Zealand 
 would be a pleasanter way of escaping from his creditors 
 than marrying Miss Coppard. Certainly Francie had no 
 thought of his selfishness or of her own sacrifice. She was 
 giddy with struggle ; right and wrong had lost their meaning 
 and changed places elusively ; the only things that she saw 
 clearly were the beautiful future that had been offered to 
 her, and the look in Roddy's face when she had told him that 
 wherever he had to go she would go with him. 
 
 The horses had moved staidly on, while these two lives 
 stood still and wrestled with their fate, and the summit was 
 slowly reached of the long hill on which Lambert had once 
 pointed out to her the hoof-prints of Hawkins' pony. The 
 white road and the grey rock country stretched out before 
 them, colourless and discouraging under the colourless sky, 
 and Hawkins still waited for his answer. Coming towards 
 them up the tedious slope was a string of half-a-dozen carts, 
 with a few people walking on either side ; an unremarkable 
 procession, that might have meant a wedding, or merely a 
 neighbourly return from market, but for a long, yellow coffin 
 that lay, hemmed in between old women, in the midmost 
 cart. Francie felt a superstitious thrill as she saw it ; a 
 country funeral, with its barbarous and yet fitting crudity, 
 always seemed to bring death nearer to her than the plumed 
 conventionalities of the hearses and mourning coaches that 
 she was accustomed to. She had once been to the funeral 
 of a fellow Sunday-school child in Dublin, and the first 
 verse of the hymn that they had sung then, came back, and 
 began to weave itself in with the beat of the mare's hoofs. 
 
 " Brief life is here our portion, 
 
 Brief sorrow, short-lived care, 
 The life that knows no ending, 
 The tearless life is there." 
 
The Real Charlotte. 377 
 
 "Francie, are you going to answer me? Come away 
 with me this very day. We could catch the six o'clock train 
 before any one knew -dearest, if you love me * His 
 roughened, unsteady voice seemed to come to her from a 
 distance, and yet was like a whisper in her own heart. 
 
 " Wait till we are past the funeral," she said, catching, in 
 her agony, at the chance of a minute's respite. 
 
 At the same moment an old man, who had been standing 
 by the side of the road, leaning on his stick, turned towards 
 the riders, and Francie recognised in him Charlotte's 
 retainer, Billy Grainy. His always bloodshot eyes were 
 redder than ever, his mouth dribbled like a baby's, and the 
 smell of whisky poisoned the air all around him. 
 
 " I'm waitin' on thim here this half-hour," he began, in a 
 loud drunken mumble, hobbling to Francie's side, and mov- 
 ing along beside the mare, " as long as they were taking her 
 back the road to cry her at her own gate. Owld bones is 
 wake, asthore, owld bones is wake ! " He caught at the hem 
 of Francie's habit to steady himself; "be cripes ! Miss 
 Duffy was a fine woman, Lord ha' maircy on her. And a 
 great woman ! And divil blasht thim that threw her out of 
 her farm to die in the Union the dom ruffins." 
 
 As on the day, now very long ago, when she had first 
 ridden to Gurthnamuckla, Francie tried to shake his hand 
 off her habit ; he released it stupidly, and staggering to the 
 side of the road, went on grumbling and cursing. The first 
 cart, creaking and rattling under its load of mourners, was 
 beside them by this time, and Billy, for the benefit of its 
 occupants, broke into a howl of lamentation. 
 
 "Thanks be to God Almighty, and thanks be to His 
 Mother, the crayture had thim belonging to her that would 
 bury her like a Christian." He shook his fist at Francie. 
 " Ah ha ! go home to himself and owld Charlotte, though 
 it's little thim regards you " He burst into drunken laugh- 
 ter, bending and tottering over his stick. 
 
 Francie, heedless of the etiquette that required that 
 she and Hawkins should stop their horses till the funeral 
 passed, struck the mare, and passed by him at a quickened 
 pace. The faces in the carts were all turned upon her, 
 and she felt as if she were enduring, in a dream, the 
 eyes of an implacable tribunal; even the mare seemed 
 to share in her agitation, and sidled and* fidgeted on 
 
378 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 the narrow strip of road, that was all the space left to her by 
 the carts. The coffin was almost abreast of Francie now, 
 and her eyes rested with a kind of fascination on its bare, 
 yellow surface. She became dimly aware that Norry the 
 Boat was squatted beside it on the straw, when one of the 
 other women began suddenly to groan and thump on the 
 coffin-lid with her fists, in preparation for a burst of the Irish 
 Cry, and at the signal Norry fell upon her knees, and flung 
 out her arms inside her cloak, with a gesture that made her 
 look like a great vulture opening its wings for flight. The 
 cloak flapped right across the mare's face, and she swerved 
 from the cart with a buck that loosened her rider in the 
 saddle, and shook her hat off. There was a screech of 
 alarm frgm all the women, the frightened mare gave a second 
 and a third buck, and at the third Francie was shot into the 
 air, and fell, head first, on the road. 
 
 CHAPTER LI. 
 
 THE floor of the potato loft at Gurthnamuckla had for a 
 long time needed repairs, a circumstance not in itself dis- 
 tressing to Miss Mullen, who held that effort after mere 
 theoretical symmetry was unjustifiable waste of time in eithei 
 housekeeping or farming. On this first of June, however, 
 an intimation from Norry that " there's ne'er a pratie ye have 
 that isn't ate with the rats," given with the thinly-veiled 
 triumph of servants in such announcements, caused a tru- 
 culent visit of inspection to the potato loft ; and in her first 
 spare moment of the afternoon, Miss Mullen set forth with 
 her tool-basket, and some boards from a packing-case, to 
 make good the breaches with her own hands. Doing it her- 
 self saved the necessity of taking the men from their work, 
 and moreover ensured its being properly done. 
 
 . So she thought, as, having climbed the ladder that led 
 from the cowhouse to the loft, she put her tools on the 
 ground, and surveyed with a workman's eye the job she had 
 set herself. The loft was hot and airless, redolent of the 
 cowhouse below, as well as of the clayey mustiness of the 
 potatoes that were sprouting in the dirt on the floor, and 
 even sending pallid, worm-like roots down into space through 
 the cracks in^he boards. Miss Mullen propped the window- 
 
The Real Charlotte 379 
 
 shutter open with the largest potato, and, pinning up her 
 skirt, fell to work. 
 
 She had, been hammering and sawing for a quarter of an 
 hour when she heard the clatter of a horse's hoofs on the 
 cobble-stones of the yard, and, getting up from her knees, 
 advanced to the window with caution and looked out. It 
 was Mr. Lambert, in the act of pulling up his awkward 
 young horse, and she stood looking down at him in silence 
 while he dismounted, with a remarkable expression on her 
 face, one in which some acute mental process was mixed 
 with the half-unconscious and yet all-observant recognition 
 of an intensely familiar object. 
 
 " Hullo, Roddy ! " she called out at last, " is that you ? 
 What brings you over so early ? " 
 
 Mr. Lambert started with more violence than the occa- 
 sion seemed to demand. 
 
 " Hullo ! " he replied, in a voice not like his own, " is 
 that where you are ? " 
 
 " Yes, and it's where I'm going to stay. This is the kind 
 of fancy work I'm at," brandishing her saw ; " so if you 
 want to talk to me you must come up here." 
 
 " All right," said Lambert, gloomily, " I'll come up as 
 soon as I put the colt in the stable." 
 
 It is a fact so improbable as to be worth noting, that 
 before Lambert found his way up the ladder, Miss Mullen 
 had unpinned her skirt and fastened up the end of a plait 
 that had escaped from the massive coils at the back of her 
 head. 
 
 " Well, and where's the woman that owns you ? " she 
 asked, beginning to work again, while her visitor stood in 
 obvious discomfort, with his head touching the rafters, and 
 the light from the low window striking sharply up against 
 his red and heavy eyes. 
 
 "At home," he replied, almost vacantly. "I'd have 
 been here half an hour ago or more," he went on after a 
 moment or two, " but the colt cast a shoe, and I had to go 
 on to the forge beyond the cross to get it put on." 
 
 Charlotte, with a flat pencil in her mouth, grunted re- 
 sponsively, while she measured off a piece of board, and, 
 holding it with her knee on the body of a legless wheel- 
 barrow, began to saw it across. Lambert looked on, pro- 
 voked and disconcerted by this engrossing industry. With 
 
380 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 his brimming sense of collapse and crisis, he felt that even 
 this temporary delay of sympathy was an unkindfiess. 
 
 u That colt must be sold this week, so I couldn't afford 
 to knock his hoof to bits on the hard road." His manner 
 was so portentous that Charlotte looked up again, and per- 
 mitted herself to remark on what had been apparent to her 
 the moment she saw him. 
 
 "Why, what's the matter with you, Roddy? Now I 
 come to see you, you look as if you'd been at your own 
 funeral." 
 
 "I wish to God I hadl It would be the best thing 
 could happen me." 
 
 He found pleasure in saying something to startle her, 
 and in seeing that her face became a shade hotter than the 
 stifling air and the stooping over her work had made it. 
 
 "What makes you talk like that?" she said, a little 
 strangely, as it seemed to him. 
 
 He thought she was moved, and he immediately felt his 
 position to be more pathetic than he had believed. It 
 would be much easier to explain the matter to Charlotte 
 than to Francie, he felt at once ; Charlotte understood 
 business matters, a formula which conveyed to his mind 
 much comfortable flexibility in money affairs. 
 
 " Charlotte," he said, looking down at her with eyes that 
 self-pity and shaken self-control were moistening again, 
 " I'm in most terrible trouble. Will you help me ? " 
 
 "Wait till I hear what it is and I'll tell you that," 
 replied Charlotte, with the same peculiar, flushed look on 
 her face, and suggestion in her voice of strong and latent 
 feeling. He could not tell how it was, but he felt as if she 
 knew what he was going to say. 
 
 " I'm four hundred pounds in debt to the estate, and 
 Dysart has found it out," he said, lowering his voice as if 
 afraid that the spiders and wood-lice might repeat his 
 secret. 
 
 " Four hundred," thought Charlotte; " that's more than I 
 reckoned ; " but she said aloud, " My God ! Roddy, how 
 did that happen ? " 
 
 " I declare to you I don't know how it happened. One 
 thing and another came against me, and I had to borrow 
 this money, and before I could pay it he found out." 
 
 Lambert was a pitiable figure as he made his confession, 
 
The Real Charlotte. 381 
 
 his head, his shoulders, and even his moustache drooping 
 limply, and his hands nervously twisting his ash plant. 
 
 " That's a bad business," said Charlotte reflectively, and 
 was silent for a moment, while Lambert realised the satis- 
 faction of dealing with an intelligence that could take in 
 such a situation instantaneously, without alarm or even sur- 
 prise. 
 
 " Is he going to give you the sack ? " she asked. 
 
 " I don't know yet. He didn't say anything definite." 
 
 Lambert found the question hard to bear, but he endured 
 it for the sake of the chance it gave him to lead up to the 
 main point of the interview. " If I could have that four 
 hundred placed to his credit before I see him next, I believe 
 there'd be an end of it. Not that I'd stay with him," he 
 went on, trying to bluster, " or with any man that treated 
 me ttys kind of way, going behind my back to look at the 
 accounts." 
 
 " Is that the way he found you out ? " asked Charlotte, 
 taking up the lid of the packing-case and twisting a nail out 
 of it with her hammer " He must be smarter than you took 
 him for." 
 
 " Someone must have put him up to it," said Lambert, 
 " someone who'd got at the books. It beats me to make it 
 out. But what's the good of thinking of that? The thing 
 that's setting me mad is to know how to pay him." He 
 waited to see if Charlotte would speak, but she was occu- 
 pied in straightening the nail against the wall with her 
 hammer, and he went on with a dry throat. " I'm going to 
 sell all my horses, Charlotte, and I daresay I can raise some 
 money on the furniture ; but it's no easy job to raise money 
 in such a hurry as this, and if I'm to be saved from being 
 disgraced, I ought to have it at once to stop his mouth. I 
 believe if I could pay him at once he wouldn't have spunk 
 enough to go any further with the thing." He waited again^ 
 but the friend of his youth continued silent. " Charlotte, 
 no man ever had a better friend, through thick and thin, 
 than I've had in you. There's no other person living that 
 I'd put myself under an obligation to but yourself. Char- 
 lotte, for the sake of all that's ever been between us, would 
 you lend me the money ? " 
 
 Her face was hidden from him as she knelt, and he 
 stooped and placed a clinging, affectionate hand upon her 
 
382 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 shoulder. Miss Mullen got up abruptly, and Lambert's 
 hand fell. 
 
 " All that's ever been between us is certainly a very 
 weighty argument, Roddy," she said with a smile that 
 deepened the ugly lines about her mouth, and gave Lambert 
 a chilly qualm. " There's a matter of three hundred pounds 
 between us, if that's what you mean." 
 
 " I know, Charlotte," he said hastily. '* No one remem- 
 bers that better than I do. But this is a different kind of 
 thing altogether. I'd give you a bill of sale on everything 
 at Rosemount and there are the horses out here too. Of 
 course, I suppose I might be able to raise the money at the 
 bank or somewhere, but it's a very different thing to deal 
 with a friend, and a friend who can hold her tongue too. 
 You never failed me yet, Charlotte, old girl, and I don't 
 believe you'll do it now ! " 
 
 His handsome, dark eyes were bent upon her face with 
 all the pathos he was master of, and he was glad to feel 
 tears rising in them. 
 
 " Well, I'm afraid that's just what I'll have to do," she 
 said, flinging away the nail that she had tried to straighten, 
 and fumbling in her pocket for another ; " I may be able to 
 hold my tongue, but I don't hold with throwing good money 
 after bad." 
 
 Lambert stood quite still, staring at her, trying to believe 
 that this was the Charlotte who had trembled when he 
 kissed her, whose love for him had made her his useful and 
 faithful thrall. 
 
 " Do you mean to say that you'll see me ruined and dis- 
 graced sooner than put out your hand to help me?" he 
 said passionately. 
 
 11 1 thought you said you could get the money somewhere 
 else," she replied, with undisturbed coolness, "and you 
 might know that coming to me for money is like going to 
 the goat's house for wool. I've got nothing more to lend, 
 and no one ought to know that better than your- 
 self!" 
 
 Charlotte was standing, yellow-faced and insolent, opposite 
 to Lambert, with her hands in the pockets of her apron ; in 
 every way a contrast to him, with his flushed forehead and 
 suffused eyes. The dull, white light that struck up into the 
 roof from the whitewashed kitchen wall, showed Lambert 
 
The Real Charlotte. 383 
 
 the furrowed paths of implacability in his adversary's face, 
 as plainly as it showed her his defeat and desperation. 
 
 " You've got no more money to lend, d'ye say ! " he re- 
 peated, with a laugh that showed he had courage enough 
 left to lose his temper; " I suppose you've got all the money 
 you got eighteen months ago from the old lady lent out ? 
 Ton my word, considering you got Francie's share of it 
 for yourself, I think it would have been civiller to have given 
 her husband the first refusal of a loan ! I daresay I'd have 
 given you as good interest as your friends in Ferry Lane ! " 
 
 Charlotte's eyes suddenly lost their exaggerated indiffer- 
 ence. 
 
 " And if she ever had the smallest claim to what ye call a 
 share ! " she vociferated, " haven't you had it twenty times 
 over ? Was there ever a time that ye came cringing and 
 crawling to me for money that I refused it to ye ? And 
 how do you thank me ? By embezzling the money I paid 
 for the land, and then coming to try and get it out of me 
 over again, because Sir Christopher Dysart is taught sense 
 to look into his own affairs, and see how his agent is cheat- 
 ing him ! " 
 
 Some quality of triumph in her tone, some light of previ- 
 ous knowledge in her eye, struck Lambert. 
 
 " Was it you told him ? " he said hoarsely, " was it you 
 spoke to Dysart ? " 
 
 Even now and then in the conduct of her affairs, Miss 
 Mullen permitted the gratification of her temper to take the 
 place of the slower pleasure of secrecy. 
 
 " Yes, I told him," she answered, without hesitation. 
 
 " You went to Dysart, and set him on to ruin me ! " said 
 Lambert, in a voice that had nearly as much horror as rage 
 in it. 
 
 " And may I ask you what you've ever done for me," 
 she said, gripping her hammer with a strong, trembling 
 hand, " that I was to keep your tricks from being found out 
 for you ? What reason was there in God's earth that I 
 wasn't to do my plain duty by those that are older friends 
 than you ? " 
 
 " What reason ! " Lambert almost choked from the in- 
 tolerable audacity and heartlessness of the question. " Are 
 you in your right mind to ask me that ? You, that's been 
 like a a near relation to me all these years, or pretending 
 
384 The Real Charlotte. 
 
 to be ! There was a time you wouldn't have done mis to 
 me, you know it damned well, and so do I. You were glad 
 enough to do anything for me then, so long as I'd be as 
 much as civil to you, and now, I suppose, this is your dirty 
 devilish spite, because you were cut out by someone else ! " 
 
 She did not flinch as the words went through and through 
 her. 
 
 " Take care of yourself ! " she said, grinning at him, 
 " perhaps you're not the one to talk about being cut out ! 
 Oh, I don't think ye need look as if ye didn't understand 
 me. At all events, all ye have to do is to go home and ask 
 your servants or, for the matter of that, anyone in the 
 streets of Lismoyle who it is that's cut ye out, and made 
 ye the laughing-stock of the country ? " 
 
 She put her hand on the dusty beam beside her, giddy 
 with her gratified impulse, as she saw him take the blow 
 and wither under it. 
 
 She scarcely heard at first the strange and sudden sound 
 of commotion that had sprung up like a wind in the 
 house opposite. The windows were all open, and through 
 them came the sound of banging doors and running foot- 
 steps, and then Norry's voice screaming something as she 
 rushed from room to room. She was in the kitchen now, 
 and the words came gasping and sobbing through the open 
 door. 
 
 " Where's Miss Charlotte ? Where is she ? O God ! 
 O God ! Where is she ? Miss Francie's killed, her neck's 
 broke below on the road ! O God of Heaven, help us ! " 
 
 Neither Charlotte nor Lambert heard clearly what she 
 said, but the shapeless terror of calamity came about them 
 like a vapour and blanched the hatred in their faces. In a 
 moment they were together at the window, and at the same 
 instant Norry burst out into the yard, with outflung arms 
 and grey hair streaming. As she saw Lambert, her strength 
 seemed to go from her. She staggered back, and, catching 
 at the door for support, turned from him and hid her face in 
 her cloak. 
 
 FINIS, 
 
 Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty 
 at tha Edinburgh University Press, Scotland 
 
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