256 TJte Real Charlotte. 



ing her papers and going through her afifairs generally. He 

 got to work at eleven o'clock, taking first the letters and 

 papers that were locked up in a work-table, a walnut-topped 

 and silken-fluted piece of furniture that had been given to 

 Mrs. Lambert by a Limerick friend, and, having been con- 

 sidered too handsome for everyday use, had been consecrated 

 by her to the conservation of letters and of certain valued 

 designs for Berlin wool work and receipts for crochet 

 stitches. Lambert lighted a fire in the drawing-room, and 

 worked his way down through the contents of the green 

 silk pouch, finding there every letter, every note even, that 

 he had ever written to his wife, and committing them to the 

 flames with a curious sentimental regret. He had not re- 

 membered that he had written her so many letters, and he 

 said to himself that he wished those old devils of women in 

 Lismoyle, who, he knew, had always been so keen to pity 

 Lucy, could know what a good husband he had been to her. 

 Inside the envelope of one of his own letters was one from 

 Francie Fitzpatrick, evidently accidentally thrust there ; a 

 few crooked lines to say that she had got the lodgings for 

 Mrs. Lambert in Charles Street, but the landlady wouldn't 

 be satisfied without she got two and sixpence extra for the 

 kitchen fire. Lambert put the note into his pocket, where 

 there was already another document in the same hand- 

 writing, bearing the Bray postmark with the date of Sep- 

 tember 18, and when all was finished, and the grate full of 

 flaky spectral black heaps, he went upstairs and unlocked 

 the door of what had been his wife's room. The shutters 

 were shut, and the air of the room had a fortnight's close- 

 ness in it. When he opened the shutters there was a 

 furious buzzing of flies, and although he had the indifference 

 about fresh air common to his class, he flung up the win- 

 dow, and drew a long breath of the briUiant morning before 

 he went back to his dismal work of sorting and destroying. 

 What was he to do with such things as the old photographs 

 of her father and mother, her work-basket, her salts-bottle, 

 the handbag that she used to carry into Lismoyle with her ? 

 He was not an imaginative man, but he was touched by the 

 smallness, the familiarity of these only relics of a trivial life, 

 and he stood and regarded the sheeted furniture, and the 

 hundred odds and ends that lay about the room, with an 



