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." 



