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.
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