“I know nothing about anything,” interrupted Francie; “I don’t know how long it isn’t since you wrote to me, and when you do you never tell me anything. You might be all dead and buried down there for all I know or care!”
The smallest possible glance under her eyelids tempered this statement and confused Mr. Lambert’s grasp of his subject.
“Do you mean that, about not caring if I was dead or no? I daresay you do. No one cares now what happens to me.”
He almost meant what he said, her elusiveness was so exasperating, and his voice told his sincerity. Last summer she would have laughed pitilessly at his pathos, and made it up with him afterwards. But she was changed since last summer, and now as she looked at him she felt a forlorn kinship with him.
“Ah, what nonsense!” she said caressingly. “I’d be awfully sorry if anything happened you.” As if he could not help himself he took her hand, but before he could speak she had drawn it away. “Indeed, you might have been dead,” she went on hurriedly, “for all you told me in your letters. Begin now and tell me the Lismoyle news. I think you said the Dysarts were away from Bruff still, didn’t you?”
Lambert felt as if a hot and a cold spray of water had been turned on him alternately. “The Dysarts? Oh, yes, they’ve been away for some time,” he said, recovering himself; “they’ve been in London, I believe, staying with her people, since you’re so anxious to know about them.”
“Why wouldn’t I want to know about them?” said Francie, getting off the wall. “Come on and walk a bit; it’s cold sitting here.”
Lambert walked on by her side rather sulkily; he was angry with himself for having let his feelings run away with him, and he was angry with Francie for pulling him up so quickly.
“Christopher Dysart’s off again,” he said abruptly; “he’s got another of these diplomatic billets.” He believed that Francie would find the information unpleasant, and he was in some contradictory way disappointed that she seemed quite unaffected by it. “He’s unpaid attaché to old Lord Castlemore at Copenhagen,” he went on; “he started last week.”
So Christopher was gone from her too, and never wrote her a line before he went. They’re all the same, she thought, all they want is to spoon a girl for a bit, and if she lets them do it they get sick of her, and whatever she does they forget her the next minute. And there was Roddy Lambert trying to squeeze her hand just now, and poor Mrs. Lambert, that was worth a dozen of him, not dead six months. She walked on, and forced herself to talk to him, and to make inquiries about the Bakers, Dr. Rattray, Mr. Corkran, and other lights of Lismoyle society. It was absurd, but it was none the less true that the news that Mr. Corkran was engaged to Carrie Beattie gave her an additional pang. The enamoured glances of the curate were fresh in her memory, and the thought that they were being now bestowed upon Carrie Beattie’s freckles and watering eyes was, though ludicrous, not altogether pleasing. She burst out laughing suddenly.