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 VL 



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 



