tory; and
a dull bitter feeling filled her. It was safe to indulge it, for
everybody else had enough beside to think of, and she grew silent.

'You are tired,' said Pitt kindly, as they were leaving the Confessor's
chapel, and his mother and father had gone on before.

'Of course,' said Betty. 'There is no going through the ages without
some fatigue--for a common mortal.'

'We are doing too much,' said Pitt. 'The Abbey cannot be properly seen
in this way. One should take part at a time, and come many times.'

'No chance for me,' said Betty. 'This is my first and my last.' She
looked back as she spoke towards the tombs they were leaving, and
wished, almost, that she were as still as they. She felt her eyes
suffusing, and hastily went on. 'I shall be going home, I expect, in a
few days--as soon as I find an opportunity. I have stayed too long now,
but Mrs. Dallas has over-persuaded me. I am glad I have had this, at
any rate.'

She was capable of no more words just then, and was about to move
forward, when Pitt by a motion of his hand detained her.

'One moment,' said he. 'Do you say that you are thinking of returning
to America?'

'Yes. It is time.'

'I would beg you, if I might, to reconsider that,' he said. 'If you
could stay with my mother a while longer, it would be, I am sure, a
great boon to her; for _I_ am going away. I must take a run over to
America--I have business in New York--must be gone several weeks at
least. Cannot you stay and go down into Westmoreland with her?'

It seemed to Betty that she became suddenly cold, all over. Yet she was
sure there was no outward manifestation in face or manner of what she
felt. She answered mechanically, indifferently, that she 'would see';
and they went forward to rejoin their companions. But of the rest of
the objects that were shown them in the Abbey she simply saw nothing.
The image of Esther was before her; in New York, found by Pitt; in
Westminster Abbey, brought thither by him, and lingering where her own
feet now lingered; in the house at Kensington, going up the beautiful
staircase, and standing before the cabinet of coins in the library.
Above all, found by Pitt in New York. For he would find her; perhaps
even now he had news of her; _she_ would be coming with hope and
gladness and honour over the sea, while she herself would be returning,
crossing the same sea the other way,--in every sense the other way,--in
mortification and despair and dishonour. No