500 The Real Charlotte. 



A human soul, when it has broken away from its diviner 

 part and is left to the anarchy of the lower passions, is a 

 poor and humiliating spectacle, and it is unfortunate that in 

 its animal want of self-control it is seldom v/ithout a ludicrous 

 aspect. The weak side of Charlotte's nature was her ready 

 abandonment of herself to fury that was, as often as not, 

 wholly incompatible with its cause, and now that she had 

 been dealt the hardest blow that life could give her, there 

 were a few minutes in which rage, and hatred, and thwarted 

 passion took her in their fierce hands, and made her for the 

 time a wild beast. When she came to herself she was 

 standing by the chimney-piece, panting and trembling ; the 

 letter lay in pieces on the rug, torn by her teeth, and stamped 

 here and there with the semicircle of her heel ; a chair was 

 lying on its side on the floor, and Mrs. Bruff was crouching 

 aghast under the sideboard, looking out at her mistress with 

 terrified inquiry. 



Charlotte raised her hand and drew it across her mouth 

 with the unsteadiness of a person in physical pain, then, 

 grasping the edge of the chimney-piece, she laid her fore- 

 head upon it and drew a few long shuddering breaths. It 

 is probable that if anyone had then come into the room, 

 the human presence, with its mysterious electric quality, 

 would have drawn the storm outwards in a burst of 

 hysterics ; but solitude seems to be a non-conductor, and a 

 parched sob, that was strangled in its birth by an impreca- 

 tion, was the only sound that escaped from her. As she 

 lifted her head again her eyes met those of a large cabinet 

 photograph of Lambert that stared brilliantly at her with the 

 handsome fatuity conferred by an over-touched negative. 

 It was a recent one, taken during one of those visits 

 to Dublin whose object had been always so plausibly 

 explained to her, and, as she looked at it, the biting 

 thought of how she had been hoodwinked and fooled, 

 by a man to whom she had all her life laid down the law, 

 drove her half mad again. She plucked it out of its frame 

 with her strong fingers, and thrust it hard down into the 

 smouldering fire. 



" If it was hell I'd do the same for you ! " she said, with 

 a moan like some furious feline creature, as she watched 

 the picture writhe in the heat, " and for her too ! " She 



