He had now been a week at Broomhead: flirting with Charlotte, giving stolen minutes to Maria. A looker-on might have decided that Miss Pain was the gentleman's chief attraction: for, in public, his attentions were principally given to her. _She_ may be pardoned for estimating them at more than they were worth: but she could very well have welcomed any friendly wind that would have wafted away Maria, and have kept her away. They knew, those two girls, that their mutual intercourse was of a hollow nature; their paraded friendship, their politeness, rotten at the core. Each was jealous of the other; and the one subject which filled their minds was never alluded to in conversation. Either might have affirmed to the other, "You are aware that I watch you and George: my jealous eyes are upon your every movement, my jealous ears are ever open." But these avowals are not made in social life, and Charlotte and Maria observed studied courtesy, making believe to be mutually unconscious: knowing all the time that the consciousness existed in a remarkable degree. It was an artificial state of things. "How dark you are putting in those trees!" exclaimed Charlotte Pain. Maria paused, pencil in hand; glanced at the trees opposite, and at the trees on paper. "Not too dark," she said. "The grove is a heavy one." "What's that queer-looking thing in the corner? It is like a half-moon, coming down to pay us a visit." Maria held out her sketch at arm's distance, laughing merrily. "You do not understand perspective, Charlotte. Look at it now." "Not I," said Charlotte. "I understand nothing of the work. They tried to teach me when I was a child, but I never could make a straight line without the ruler. After all, where's the use of it? The best-made sketch cannot rival its model--nature." "But sketches serve to remind us of familiar places, when we are beyond their reach," was Maria's answer. "I love drawing." "Maria draws well," observed George Godolphin, from his swinging perch on the branch of a neighbouring tree. She looked up at him, almost gratefully. "This will be one of the best sketches I have taken here," she said. "It is so thoroughly picturesque: and that farm-house, under the hill, gives life to the picture." Charlotte Pain cast her eyes upon the house in the distance over the green field, to which she had not before vouchsafed a glance. A shade of contempt crossed her face. "Call _that_ a farm-house! I should say it was a tumble-down old cottage." "It is large for a cottage; and has a barn and a shed round it," returned Maria. "I conclude that it was a farm some time." "It is not inhabited," said Charlotte. "Oh, yes it is. There is a woman standing at the door. I have put her into my sketch." "And her pipe also?" cried George. "Her pipe!" George took his own cigar from his mouth, as he answered. "She is smoking, that woman. A short pipe."