“Roddy,” said Charlotte at last, and Lambert now observed how low and rough her voice was, “do you remember in old times once or twice, when you were put to it for a five-pound note, you made no bones about asking a friend to help you? Well, you know I’m a poor woman”--even at this moment Charlotte’s caution asserted itself--“but I daresay I could put my hand on a couple of hundred, and if they’d be any use to you--”
Lambert became very red. The possibility of some such a climax as this had floated in a sub-current of thought just below the level of formed ideas, but now that it had come, it startled him. It was an unheard-of thing that Charlotte should make such an offer as this. It gave him suddenly a tingling sense of power, and at the same time a strange instinct of disgust and shame.
“Oh, my dear Charlotte,” he began awkwardly, “upon my soul you’re a great deal too good. I never thought of such a thing--I--I--” he stammered, wishing he could refuse, but casting about for words in which to accept.
“Ah, nonsense. Now, Roddy, me dear boy,” interrupted Charlotte, regaining her usual manner as she saw his embarrassment, “say no more about it. We’ll consider it a settled thing, and we’ll go through the base business details after tea.”
Lambert said to himself that there was really no way out of it. If she was so determined the only thing was to let her do as she liked; no one could say that the affair was of his seeking.
“And, you know,” continued Charlotte in her most jocular voice, before he could frame a sentence of the right sort, “who knows, if I get the farm, that we mightn’t make a joint-stock business out of it, and have young horses there, and all the rest of it!”
“You’re awfully good, Charlotte,” said Lambert, with an emotion in his voice that she did not guess to be purely the result of inward relief and exultation; “I’m awfully obliged to you--you always were a--a true friend--some day, perhaps, I’ll be able to show you what I think about it,” he stammered, unable to think of anything else to say, and, lifting his hand from the splash-board, he put it on hers, that lay in her lap with the reins in it, and pressed it for a moment. Into both their minds shot simultaneously the remembrance of a somewhat similar scene, when, long ago, Charlotte had come to the help of her father’s pupil, and he had expressed his gratitude in a more ardent manner--a manner that had seemed cheap enough to him at the time, but that had been more costly to Charlotte than any other thing that had ever befallen her.