“Well, what else do you propose to do with them?” said Charlotte, who had already got out a pencil and paper and was making a list.
“Upon my soul, I don’t know,” said Lambert, beginning to realise that there was but one way out of the difficulty, and perceiving with irritated amusement that Charlotte had driven him towards it like a sheep, “unless you’d like them yourself?”
“And do you think I’d accept them from you?” demanded Charlotte, with an indignation so vivid that even the friend of her youth was momentarily deceived and almost frightened by it; “I, that was poor Lucy’s oldest friend! Do you think I could bear—”
Lambert saw the opportunity that had been made for him.
“It’s only because you were her oldest friend that I’d offer them to you,” he struck in; “and if you won’t have them yourself, I thought you might know of someone that would.”
Charlotte swallowed her wrath with a magnanimous effort. “Well, Roddy, if you put it in that way, I don’t like to refuse,” she said, wiping a ready tear away with a black-edged pocket handkerchief; “it’s quite true, I know plenty would be glad of a help. There’s that unfortunate Letitia Fitzpatrick, that I’ll be bound hasn’t more than two gowns to her back; I might send her a bundle.”
“Send them to whom you like,” said Lambert, ignoring the topic of the Fitzpatricks as intentionally as it had been introduced; “but I’d be glad if you could find some things for Julia Duffy; I suppose she’ll be coming out of the infirmary soon. What we’re to do about that business I don’t know,” he continued, filling another pipe. “Dysart said he wouldn’t have her put out if she could hold on anyway at all—”
“Heavenly powers!” exclaimed Charlotte, letting fall a collection of rolled-up kid gloves, “d’ye mean to say you didn’t hear she’s in the Ballinasloe Asylum? She was sent there three days ago.”
“Great Scot! Is she gone mad? I was thinking all this time what I was to do with her!”
“Well, you needn’t trouble your head about her any more. Her wits went as her body mended, and a board of J.P.’s and M.D.’s sat upon her, and as one of them was old Fatty Ffolliott, you won’t be surprised to hear that that was the end of Julia Duffy.”