pable of it. You see in
those days we had not been trained at all (one had only been allowed
tremendous liberty), and interfered conversationally with one's elders
and betters at any moment. I was an American little girl, and American
little girls were really--they really were!" with a laugh, whose musical
sound was after all wholly non-committal.

"You did not treat Sir Nigel Anstruthers as one of your betters."

"He was one of my elders, at all events, and becomingness of bearing
should have taught me to hold my little tongue. I am giving some thought
now to the kind of thing I must invent as a suitable apology when I find
him a really delightful person, full of virtues and accomplishments.
Perhaps he has a horror of me."

"I should like to be present at your first meeting," Mrs. Worthington
reflected. "You are going down to Stornham to-morrow?"

"That is my plan. When I write to you on my arrival, I will tell you if
I encountered the horror." Then, with a swift change of subject and a
lifting of her slender, velvet line of eyebrow, "I am only deploring
that I have not time to visit the Tower."

Mrs. Worthington was betrayed into a momentary glance of uncertainty,
almost verging in its significance on a gasp.

"The Tower? Of London? Dear Betty!"

Bettina's laugh was mellow with revelation.

"Ah!" she said. "You don't know my point of view; it's plain enough.
You see, when I delight in these things, I think I delight most in my
delight in them. It means that I am almost having the kind of feeling
the fresh American souls had who landed here thirty years ago and
revelled in the resemblance to Dickens's characters they met with in
the streets, and were historically thrilled by the places where people's
heads were chopped off. Imagine their reflections on Charles I., when
they stood in Whitehall gazing on the very spot where that poor last
word was uttered--'Remember.' And think of their joy when each crossing
sweeper they gave disproportionate largess to, seemed Joe All Alones in
the slightest disguise."

"You don't mean to say----" Mrs. Worthington was vaguely awakening to
the situation.

"That the charm of my visit, to myself, is that I realise that I am
rather like that. I have positively preserved something because I have
kept away. You have been here so often and know things so well, and you
were even so sophisticated when you began, that you have never really
had the flavours and emotions. I am sophisti