3o8 The Real Charlotte. 



breeze had become rough and cold. The lamps were shin- 

 ing among the trees on the Boulevards, and the red and 

 green eyes of the cabs and trams crossed and recrossed 

 each other like a tangle of fire-flies. The electric lights of 

 the Place du Louvre were at length in sights lofty and pale, 

 like globes of imprisoned daylight above the mundane flare 

 of the gas, and Francie's eyes turned towards them with a 

 languid relief. Her old gift of living every moment of her 

 day seemed gone, and here, in this wonderful Paris, that 

 had so suddenly acquired a real instead of a merely geo- 

 graphical existence for her, the stream of foreign life was 

 passing by her, and leaving her face as uninterested and 

 wearied as it ever had been when she looked out of the 

 window at Albatross Villa at the messenger boys and bakers' 

 carts. The street was crowded, and the carriage made 

 slower and slower way through it, till it became finally 

 wedged in the centre of a block. Lambert stood up, and 

 entered upon a one-sided argument with the driver as to 

 how to get out, while Francie remained silent, and indiff'er- 

 ent to the situation. A piano-organ at a little distance from 

 them was playing the Boulanger March, with the brilliancy 

 of its tribe, its unfaltering vigour dominating all other 

 sounds. It was a piece of music in which Francie had 

 herself a certain proficiency, and, shutting her eyes with a 

 pang of remembrance, she was back in the Tally Ho draw- 

 ing-room, strumming it on Charlotte's piano, while Mr. 

 Hawkins, holding the indignant Mrs. Bruff on his lap, 

 forced her unwilling paws to thump a bass. Now the 

 difficult part, in which she always broke down, was being 

 played ; he had pretended there that he was her music 

 teacher, and had counted out loud, and rapped her over 

 the knuckles with a tea-spoon, and gone on with all kinds 

 of nonsense. The carriage started forward again with a 

 jerk, and Lambert dropped back into his place beside her. 



" Of all the asses unhung these French fellows are the 

 biggest," he said fervently, " and that infernal organ bang- 

 ing away the whole time till I couldn't hear my own voice, 

 much less his jabber. Here we are at last, anyhow, and 

 you've got to get out before me." 



The tears had sprung overwhelmingly to her eyes, and 

 she could not answer a word. She turned her back on her 



