The Real Charlotte, 271 



with Charlotte, sure though she was that an untrue one had 

 already found its way to Bruff ; she could not tell him that 

 Bridget had got drunk, and that butter was so dear they had 

 to do without it ; such emergencies did not somehow come 

 within the scope of her promise to trust him, and, besides, 

 there was the serious possibility of his volunteering to see her. 

 She would have given a good deal to see him, but not at 

 Albatross Villa. She pictured him to herself, seated in the 

 midst of the Fitzpatrick family, with Ida making eyes at 

 him from under her fringe, and Bridget scuffling audibly 

 with Bobby outside the door. Tally Ho was a palace com- 

 pared with this, and yet she remembered what she had felt 

 when she came back to Tally Ho from Bruff. When she 

 thought of it all, she wondered whether she could bring 

 herself to write to Charlotte, and try to make friends with 

 her again. It would be dreadful to do, but her life at 

 Albatross Villa was dreadful, and the dream of another visit 

 to Lismoyle, when she could revenge herself on Hawkins 

 by showing him his unimportance to her, was almost too 

 strong for her pride. How much of it was due to her thirst 

 to see him again at any price, and how much to a pitiful 

 hankering after the flesh-pots of Egypt, it is hard to say ; 

 but November and December dragged by, and she did not 

 write to Christopher or Charlotte, and Lambert remained her 

 only correspondent at Lismoyle. 



It was a damp, dark December, with rain and wind nearly 

 every day. Bray Head was rarely without a cap of grey 

 cloud, and a restless pack of waves mouthing and leaping 

 at its foot. The Esplanade was a mile-long vista of soaked 

 grass and glistening asphalte, whereon the foot of man 

 apparently never trod ; once or twice a storm had charged 

 in from the south-east, and had hurled sheets of spray and 

 big stones on to it, and pounded holes in the concrete of its 

 sea-wall. There had been such a storm the week before 

 Christmas. The breakers had rushed upon the long beach 

 with "a broad-flung, shipwrecking roar," and the windows 

 of the houses along the Esplanade were dimmed with salt 

 and sand. The rain had come in under the hall door at 

 Albatross Villa, the cowl was blown off the kitchen chimney, 

 causing the smoke to make its exit through the house by 

 yjirious routes, and, worst of all, Dottie and the boys had 



