342 The Real Charlotte, 



and it was some consolation to reflect that General 

 Ffolliott's second son had had to leave his regiment for 

 cheating at cards, when she became aware that she alone, 

 among a number of afternoon callers at Castle Ffolliott, 

 had kept on her gloves during tea. 



In every conversation with Charlotte it seemed to Francie 

 that she discovered, as if by accident, some small but 

 disagreeable fact about her husband. He had been refused 

 by such and such a girl ; he had stuck so and so with a 

 spavined horse ; he had taken a drop too much at the hunt 

 ball ; and, in a general way he owed the agency and his 

 present position in society solely to the efforts of Miss 

 Mullen and her father. 



Francie accepted these things, adding them to her 

 previous store of disappointment in Roddy, with the phil- 

 osophy that she had begun to learn at Albatross Villa, and 

 that life was daily teaching her more of. They un- 

 consciously made themselves into a background calculated 

 to give the greatest effect to a figure that now occupied a 

 great deal of her thoughts. 



It was at Mrs. Waller's house that she first met Hawkins 

 after her encounter with him at Gurthnamuckla. He came 

 into the room when it was almost time for her to face the 

 dreadful ordeal of leave-taking, and she presently found 

 herself talking to him with considerably less agitation than 

 she had felt in talking about Paris to Miss Waller. The 

 memory of their last meeting kept her eyes from his, but it 

 made the ground firm under her feet, and in the five 

 minutes before she went away she felt that she had effectually 

 shown him the place she intended him to occupy, and that 

 he thoroughly understood that conversation with her was 

 a grace, and not a right. The touch of deference and 

 anxiety in his self-assured manner were as sweet to her as 

 the flowers strewed before a conqueror, and laid themselves 

 like balm on the wound of her husband's taunt. Some day 

 Roddy would see for himself the sort of way things were 

 between her and Mr. Hawkins, she thought, as she drove 

 down the avenue, and unconsciously held her head so high 

 and looked so brilliant, that Charlotte, with that new-born 

 amiability that Francie was becoming accustomed to, 

 complimented her upon her colour, and declared that, after 



