The Real Charlotte. 1 3 



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 inequahties 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 



