The Real Charlotte, 277 



that vulgarise the winding beauty of the ravine on summer 

 bank holidays. 



" Doesn't it look fearful lonely to-day ? " said Francie, 

 who had made her last visit there as a member of one of 

 these same pleasure parties, and had enjoyed herself highly. 

 " You can't hear a thing but the running of the water." 



They were sitting on the low parapet of the road, looking 

 down the brown slope of the tree-tops to the river, that was 

 running a foaming race among the rocks at the bottom of 

 the cleft. 



" I don't call it lonely," said Lambert, casting a discon- 

 tented side-long glance at a couple walking past arm-in-arm, 

 evidently in the silendy blissful stage of courtship ; " how 

 many more would you like ? " 



" Oh, lots," replied Francie, " but I'm not going to tell 

 you who they are ! " 



" I know one, anyhow," said Lambert, deliberately lead- 

 ing up to a topic that up to this had been only slightly 

 touched on. 



When he had walked home from the church with Francie 

 the evening before, he had somehow not been able to talk 

 to her consecutively ; he had felt a nervous awkwardness 

 that he had not believed himself capable of, and the fact 

 that he was holding an umbrella over her head and that she 

 had taken his arm had seemed the only thing that he could 

 give his mind to. 



" Who do you know ? " 



Francie had plucked a ribbon of hart's-tongue from the 

 edge of the w^all^ and was drawing its cold satiny length 

 across her lips. 



" Wouldn't you like it now if you saw — " he paused and 

 looked at Francie — " who shall we say — Charlotte Mullen 

 coming up the road ? '* 



" I wouldn't care." 



" Wouldn't you though ! You'd run for your life, the 

 way you did before out of Lismoyle," said Lambert, looking 

 hard at her and laughing not quite genuinely. 



The strip of hart's-tongue could not conceal a rising glow 

 in the face behind it, but Francie's voice was as undaunted 

 as ever as she repHed, 



" Who told you I ran for my life ? '^ 



