The Real Charlotte. I45 



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 fun 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 hmpid 

 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 



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