• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1664 0

this point in her reflections, she became aware that her eye was attracted by something glittering on the green baize of the dinnertable, half-hidden under two or three loose sheets of paper. It was the bangle that she remembered having seen on Francie’s wrist, and she took it up and looked curiously at the double horse-shoes as she appraised its value. She never thought of it as being real—Francie was not at all above an effective imitation—and she glanced inside to see what the mark might be. There was the eighteen-carat mark sure enough, and there also was Francie’s name and the date, July 1st, 189—. A moment’s reflection enabled Charlotte to identify this as the day of the yacht accident, and another moment sufficed for her to determine that the giver of the bangle had been Mr. Hawkins. She was only too sure that it had not been Christopher, and certainly no glimmer of suspicion crossed her mind that the first spendings from her loan to Mr. Lambert were represented by the bangle.

She opened the blotter, and read again that part of the letter that treated of Christopher Dysart. “P’yah!” she said to herself, “the little fool! what does she know about him?” At this juncture, the wheezing of the spring of the passage-door gave kindly signal of danger, and Charlotte deftly slipped the letter back into the blotter, replaced the bangle under the sheets of paper, and was standing outside the French window when Francie came into the room, with flushed cheeks, a dirty white apron, and in her hands a plate bearing a sponge-cake of the most approved shade of golden-brown. At sight of Charlotte she stopped guiltily, and, as the latter stepped in at the window, she became even redder than the fire had made her.

“Oh—I’ve just made this, Charlotte—” she faltered; “I bought the eggs and the butter myself; I sent Bid for them, and Norry said—she thought you wouldn’t mind—”

On an ordinary occasion Charlotte might have minded considerably even so small a thing as the heating of the oven and the amount of flour and sugar needed for the construction of the cake; but a slight, a very slight sense of wrong-doing, conspired, with a little confusion, consequent on the narrowness of her escape, to dispose her to compliance.

“Why, me dear child, why would I mind anything so agreeable to me and all concerned as that splendour of a cake that I see there? I declare I never gave you credit for being able to do anything half as useful! ‘Pon me honour, I’ll give a tea-party on the strength of it.” Even as she spoke she had elaborated the details of a scheme of which the motor should be the cake that Francie’s own hand had constructed.

The choir practice was poorly attended that afternoon. A long and heavy shower, coming at the critical moment, had combined with a still longer and heavier luncheon-party given by Mrs. Lynch, the solicitor’s wife, to keep away several members. Francie had evaded her duties by announcing that her only pair of thick boots had gone to be soled, and only the most ardent mustered round Mrs. Gascogne’s organ bench. Of these was Pamela Dysart, faithful, as was her wont, in the doing of what she had undertaken; and as Charlotte kicked off her goloshes at the gallery door, and saw Pamela’s figure in its accustomed place, she said to herself that consistency was an admirable quality. Her approbation was still warm when she joined Pamela at the church door after the practice was over, and she permitted herself the expression of it.

“Miss Dysart, you’re the only young woman of the rising generation in whom I place one ha’porth of reliance; I can tell you, not one step would I have stirred out on the chance of meeting any other member of the choir on a day of this kind, but I knew I might reckon on meeting you here.”

“Oh, I like coming to the practices,” said Pamela, wondering why Miss Mullen should specially want to see her. They were standing in the church porch, waiting for Pamela’s pony-cart, while the rain streamed off the roof in a white veil in front of them. “You must let me drive you home,” she went on; “but I don’t