The Real Charlotte. 219 



the grass, and lay there in the burning sun and took no 

 more trouble about anything. Her thoughts came to her 

 slowly and with great difficulty, but, once come, they whirled 

 and hammered in her brain with the reiteration of chiming 

 bells. She walked on, out of the gate, and along the road 

 to Lismoyle, mechanically going in the shade where there 

 was any, and avoiding the patches of broken stones, as pos- 

 sibly a man might who was walking out to be shot, but 

 apathetically unconscious of what was happening. 



At about this time the person whose name Julia Duffy 

 had so unfortunately selected to conjure with was sitting 

 under a tree on the slope opposite the hall door at Tally 

 Ho, reading aloud a poem of Rossetti's. 



** Her eyes were like the wave within, 

 Like water reeds the poise 

 Of her soft body, dainty thin ; 

 And like the water's noise 

 Her plaintive voice. 



*'For him the stream had never welled 

 In desert tracts malign 

 So sweet ; nor had he ever felt 

 So faint in the sunshine 

 Of Palestine." 



Francie's attention, which had revived at the description 

 of the Queen, began to wander again. The sound in 

 Christopher's voice told that the words were touching some- 

 thing deeper than his literary perception, and her sympathy 

 answered to the tone, though the drift of the poem was dark 

 to her. The music of the lines had just power enough upon 

 her ear to predispose her to sentiment, and at present, senti- 

 ment with Francie meant the tender repose of her soul 

 upon the thought of Mr. Gerald Hawkins. 



A pause at turning over a leaf recalled her again to the 

 fact of Christopher, with a transition not altogether unpleas- 

 ant ; she looked down at him as he lay on the grass, and 

 began to wonder, as she had several times wondered before, 

 if he really were in love with her. Nothing seemed more 

 unhkely. Francie admitted it to herself as she watched his 

 eyes following the lines in complete absorption, and knew 



