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By Root 1709 0

Charlotte to tell her so she was aware that Christopher detested the practice of paying visits even more sincerely than most men, and was certainly not in the habit of visiting in Lismoyle. Except to see her, there was no reason that could bring him to Tally Ho. Surer than all fact, however, and rising superior to mere logic, was her instinctive comprehension of men and their ways, and sometimes she was almost sure that he came, not from kindness, or from that desire to improve her mind which she had discerned and compassionated, but because he could not help himself. She had arrived at one of these thrilling moments of certainty when Christopher’s voice ceased upon the words, “Thy jealous God,” and she knew that the time had come for her to say something appropriate.

“Oh thank you, Mr. Dysart—that’s—that’s awfully pretty. It’s a sort of religious thing, isn’t it?

“Yes, I suppose so,” answered Christopher, looking at her with a wavering smile, and feeling as if he had stepped suddenly to the ground out of a dream of flying; “the hero’s a pilgrim, and that’s always something.”

“I know a lovely song called ‘The Pilgrim of Love,’” said Francie timidly; “of course it wasn’t the same thing as what you were reading, but it was awfully nice too.”

Christopher looked up at her, and was almost convinced that she must have absorbed something of the sentiment if not the sense of what he had read, her face was so sympathetic and responsive. With that expression in her limpid eyes it gave him a peculiar sensation to hear her say the name of Love; it was even a delight, and fired his imagination with the picturing of what it would be like to hear her say it with all her awakened soul. He might have said something that would have suggested his feeling, in the fragmentary, inferential manner that Francie never knew what to make of, but that her eyes strayed away at a click of the latch of the avenue gate, and lost their unworldliness in the sharp and easy glance that is the unvalued privilege of the keen-sighted.

“Who in the name of goodness is this?” she said, sitting up and gazing at a black figure in the avenue; “it’s some woman or other, but she looks very queer.”

“I can’t see that it matters much who it is,” said Christopher irritably, “so long as she doesn’t come up here, and she probably will if you let her see you.”

“Mercy on us! she looks awful!” exclaimed Francie incautiously; “why, it’s Miss Duffy, and her face as red as I don’t know what—oh, she’s seen us!”

The voice had evidently reached Julia Duffy’s ears; she came stumbling on, with her eyes fixed on the light blue dress under the beech tree, and when Christopher had turned, and got his eye-glass up, she was standing at the foot of the slope, looking at him with a blurred recognition.

“Mr. Dysart,” she said in a hoarse voice, that, combined with her flushed face and staring eyes, made Christopher think she was drunk, “Sir Benjamin has driven me out of his place like a beggar; me, whose family is as long on his estate as himself; and his agent wants to drive me out of my farm that was promised to me by your father I should never be disturbed in it.”

“You’re Miss Duffy from Gurthnamuckla, are you not?” interrupted Christopher, eyeing her with natural disfavour, as he got up and came down the slope towards her.

“I am, Mr. Dysart, I am,” she said defiantly, “and you and your family have a right to know me, and I ask you now to do me justice, that I shall not be turned out into the ditch for the sake of a lying double-faced schemer—” Her voice failed, as it had failed before when she spoke to Sir Benjamin, and the action of her hand that carried on her meaning had a rage in it that hid its despair.

“I think if you have anything to say you had better write it,” said Christopher, beginning to think that Lambert had some excuse for his opinion of Miss Duffy, but beginning also to pity what he thought was a spectacle of miserable, middle-aged drunkenness; “you may be sure that no injustice will be done to you—”

“Is it injustice?” broke in Julia, while the fever cloud seemed