The Real Charlotte. yj 



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, 

 " 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 sut>current of thought just 

 below the level of formed ideas, but now that it had come, 



