The Real Charlotte

It was a cold east-windy morning near the middle of March, when the roads were white and dusty, and the clouds were grey, and Miss Mullen, seated in her new dining-room at Gurth...

Few possessed of any degree of imagination can turn their backs on a churchyard, after having witnessed there the shovelling upon and stamping down of the last poor refuge of th...

The house that the Fitzpatricks had taken in Bray for the winter was not situated in what is known as the fashionable part of the town. It commanded no view either of the Esplan...

More than the half of September had gone by. A gale or two had browned the woods, and the sky was beginning to show through the trees a good deal. Miss Greely removed the sun-bu...

“Although I’m nearly dead after the bazaar I must write you a line or two to tell you what it was like. It was scrumshous. I wore my white dress with the embroidery the first da...

Late that afternoon, when the sun was beginning to stoop to the west, a wind came creeping down from somewhere back of the mountains, and began to stretch tentative cats’ paws o...

“Now, Miss Greely, before Sunday for certain; and you’ll be careful about the set of the skirt, that it doesn’t firk up at the side, the way the black one did--”

The kitchen at Tally Ho generally looked its best at ten o’clock in the morning. Its best is, in this case, a relative term, implying the temporary concealment of the plates, lo...

“Tchah!” replied Mr. Fitzpatrick, who was not in a humour to admit that any woman could be attractive, owing to the postponement of his tea by his wife so that cakes might be ba...

The expected rain had not come, though the air was heavy and damp with the promise of it. It hung unshed, above the thirsty country, looking down gloomily upon the dusty roads,...

The morning after Lambert received the telegram announcing Sir Benjamin’s death, he despatched one to Miss Charlotte Mullen at Gurthnamuckla, in which he asked her to notify his...

It was very still inside the shelter of the old turf quay at Bruff. The stems of the lilies that curved up through its brown-golden depths were visible almost down to the black...

Miss Julia Duffy, the tenant of Gurthnamuckla, was a woman of few friends. The cart track that led to her house was covered with grass, except for two brown ruts and a narrow fo...

There was no sound in the red gloom, except the steady trickle of running water, and the anxious breathing of the photographer. Christopher’s long hands moved mysteriously in th...

A few days afterwards Lambert started on his rent-collecting tour. Peace of a certain sort was restored, complete in outward seeming, but with a hidden flaw that both knew and p...

The crash of the prayer gong was the first thing that Francie heard next morning. She had not gone to sleep easily the night before. It had been so much pleasanter to lie awake,...

“Metal more attractive!” Lambert thought there could not be a more offensive phrase in the English language than this, that had rung in his ears ever since Charlotte had flung i...

Spring, that year, came delicately in among the Galway hills; in primroses, in wild bursts of gorse, and in the later snow of hawthorn, unbeaten by the rain or the wet west wind...

It had been hard work pulling the punt across from Bruff to Lismoyle with two well-grown young women sitting in the stern; it had been a hot walk up from the landing-place to th...

Sometimes there comes in Paris towards the beginning of April a week or two of such weather as is rarely seen in England before the end of May. The horse-chestnut buds break in...

Mr. Roderick Lambert’s study window gave upon the flower garden, and consequently the high road also came within the sphere of his observations. He had been sitting at his writi...

Norry the Boat toiled up the back stairs with wrath in her heart. She had been listening for some minutes with grim enjoyment to cries from the landing upstairs; unavailing call...

The broad limestone steps at Bruff looked across the lawn to the lake, and to the south. They were flanked on either hand by stone balustrades which began and ended in a pot of...

It was noon on the following day--a soaking, windy noon. Francie felt its fitness without being aware that she did so, as she knelt in front of her trunk, stuffing her few finer...

A damp winter and a chilly spring had passed in their usual mildly disagreeable manner over that small Irish country town which was alluded to in the beginning of the last chapt...

There was consternation among the cats at Tally Ho Lodge; a consternation mingled with righteous resentment. Even the patriarchal Susan could scarcely remember the time that the...

Washerwomen do not, as a rule, assimilate the principles of their trade. In Lismoyle, the row of cottages most affected by ladies of that profession was, indeed, planted by the...

Nearly three weeks had gone by since Mrs. Beattie’s party, and as Charlotte Mullen walked slowly along the road towards Rosemount one afternoon, her eyes fixed on the square toe...

Francie felt an unexpected weakness in her knees when she walked downstairs next day. She found herself clutching the stair-rail with an absurdly tight grasp, and putting her fe...

Innishochery Island lay on the water like a great green bouquet, with a narrow grey lace edging of stony beach. From the lake it seemed that the foliage stood in a solid impenet...

Lieutenant Gerald Hawkins surveyed his pink and newly shaven face above his white tie and glistening shirt-front with a smile of commendation. His moustache was looking its best...

At the back of the Rosemount kitchen-garden the ground rose steeply into a knoll of respectable height, where grew a tangle of lilac bushes, rhododendrons, seringas, and yellow...

The floor of the potato loft at Gurthnamuckla had for a long time needed repairs, a circumstance not in itself distressing to Miss Mullen, who held that effort after mere theore...

Dinner was over. Gorman was regaling his fellows in the servants’ hall with an account of how Miss Fitzpatrick had eaten her curry with a knife and fork, and her Scotch woodcock...

It was generally felt in Lismoyle that Mr. Roderick Lambert held an unassailable position in society. The Dysart agency had always been considered to confer brevet rank as a cou...

Christopher Dysart was a person about whom Lismoyle and its neighbourhood had not been able to come to a satisfactory conclusion, unless, indeed, that conclusion can be called s...

“Sausages and bacon, Lady Dysart! Yes, indeed, that was his breakfast, and that for a man who--if you’ll excuse the expression, Lady Dysart, but, indeed, I know you’re such a go...

Tea at Mrs. Beattie’s parties was a serious meal, and, as a considerable time had elapsed since any of the company, except Mr. Hawkins, had dined, they did full justice to her h...

One fine morning towards the end of August, Julia Duffy was sitting on a broken chair in her kitchen, with her hands in her lap, and her bloodshot eyes fixed on vacancy. She was...

Hawkins had, like Mrs. Baker, been in no hurry to call upon the bride. He had seen her twice in church, he had once met her out driving with her husband, and, lastly, he had com...

The drive in the spring-cart was the first moment of comparative ease from suffering that Julia had known that day. Her tormented brain was cooled by the soft steady rush of air...

There are few things that so stimulate life, both social and vegetable, in a country neighbourhood, as the rivalry that exists, sometimes unconfessed, sometimes bursting into an...

An August Sunday afternoon in the north side of Dublin. Epitome of all that is hot, arid, and empty. Tall brick houses, browbeating each other in gloomy respectability across th...

Christopher Dysart drove to Rosemount next morning to see Mr. Lambert on business. He noticed Mrs. Lambert standing at the drawing-room window as he drove up, but she left the w...

The Irish mail-boat was well up to time on that frosty thirty-first of December. She had crossed from Holyhead on an even keel, and when the Bailey light on the end of Howth had...

The pre-eminently domestic smell of black currant jam pervaded Tally Ho next day. The morning had been spent by Charlotte and her retainers in stripping the straggling old bushe...

The east wind was crying round a small house in the outskirts of an Irish country town. At nightfall it had stolen across the grey expanse of Lough Moyle, and given its first sh...

Sir Benjamin Dysart’s funeral was an event of the past. It was a full three weeks since the family vault in Lismoyle Churchyard had closed its door upon that ornament of county...

“I’ve asked Charlotte to come over and stay with you while I’m away next week. I find I can’t get through the work in less than a fortnight, and I may be kept even longer than t...

At about this very time it so happened that Mr. Hawkins was also beginning to be sorry for himself. The run to Lismoyle had been capital fun, and though the steering and the man...

Dinner at Bruff was over. It had been delayed as long as possible in the belief that each moment would bring back the culprits, and it had dragged painfully through its eight co...