o think of? It was monstrous. I saw a door in the Tower and the stone
steps, and the square space, and in the chill clear, early morning a
little slender, helpless girl led out, a little, fair, real thing like
Rosy, all alone--everyone she belonged to far away, not a man near
who dared utter a word of pity when she turned her awful, meek, young,
desperate eyes upon him. She was a pious child, and, no doubt, she
lifted her eyes to the sky. I wonder if it was blue and its blueness
broke her heart, because it looked as if it might have pitied such a
young, patient girl thing led out in the fair morning to walk to the
hacked block and give her trembling pardon to the black-visored man with
the axe, and then 'commending her soul to God' to stretch her sweet slim
neck out upon it."

"Oh, Betty, dear!" Mrs. Worthington expostulated.

Bettina sprang to her and took her hand in pretty appeal.

"I beg pardon! I beg pardon, I really do," she exclaimed. "I did
not intend deliberately to be painful. But that--beneath the
sophistication--is something of what I bring to England."

CHAPTER X

"IS LADY ANSTRUTHERS AT HOME?"

All that she had brought with her to England, combined with what she had
called "sophistication," but which was rather her exquisite appreciation
of values and effects, she took with her when she went the next day to
Charing Cross Station and arranged herself at her ease in the railway
carriage, while her maid bought their tickets for Stornham.

What the people in the station saw, the guards and porters, the men in
the book stalls, the travellers hurrying past, was a striking-looking
girl, whose colouring and carriage made one turn to glance after her,
and who, having bought some periodicals and papers, took her place in a
first-class compartment and watched the passersby interestedly through
the open window. Having been looked at and remarked on during her
whole life, Bettina did not find it disturbing that more than one
corduroy-clothed porter and fresh-coloured, elderly gentleman, or
freshly attired young one, having caught a glimpse of her through her
window, made it convenient to saunter past or hover round. She looked
at them much more frankly than they looked at her. To her they were all
specimens of the types she was at present interested in. For practical
reasons she was summing up English character with more deliberate
intention than she had felt in the years when she had gradually learned
to