156 The Real Charlotte, 



tinct in her recollection of what had happened than was 

 usual. It had seemed to her that she had lost her wonted 

 clear and mocking remembrance of events from the mo- 

 ment when he had taken her hand, and what followed was 

 blurred in her memory as a landscape is blurred by the 

 quiver of heat in the air. For another, she felt it all to be 

 so improbable, so uncertain, that she could not quite 

 believe in it herself. Hawkins was so radically different 

 from any other man she had ever known ; so much more 

 splendid in all ways, the very texture of his clothes, the 

 scent on his handkerchief, breathed to her his high estate. 

 That she should have any part in this greatness was still a 

 little beyond belief, and as she walked softly in the deep 

 grass under the trees, she kept saying to herself that he 

 could not really care for her, that it was too good to be 

 true. 



It was almost pathetic that this girl, with her wild-rose 

 freshness and vivid spring-like youth, should be humble 

 enough to think that she was not worthy of Mr. Hawkins, 

 and sophisticated enough to take his love-making as a 

 matter of common occurrence, that in no way involved any- 

 thing more serious. Whatever he might think about it, 

 however, she was certain that he would come here to-day, 

 and being wholly without the power of self-analysis, she 

 passed easily from such speculations to the simpler mental 

 exercise of counting how many hours would have to crawl 

 by before she could see him again. She had left the 

 avenue, and she strolled aimlessly across a wide marshy 

 place between the woods and the lake, that had once been 

 covered by the water, but was now so far reclaimed that 

 sedgy grass and bog-myrtle grew all over it, and creamy 

 meadow-sweet and magenta loose-strife glorified the swampy 

 patches and the edges of the drains. The pale azure of the 

 lake lay on her right hand, with, in the distance, two or 

 three white sails just tilted enough by the breeze to make 

 them look like acute accents, gaily emphasising the purpose 

 of the lake and giving it its final expression. In front of 

 her spread a long, low wood, temptingly cool and green, 

 with a gate pillared by tall fir-trees, from which, as she 

 lifted the latch, a bevy of wood-pigeons dashed out 

 startling her with the sudden frantic clapping of their wings 



