For a minute her gaze was wild as
she looked up.
"Betty," she cried out. "No! No! No! I can't believe it! I can't! I
can't!"
That just this thing could have taken place in her, Bettina had
never thought. As she had reflected on her way from the station, the
impossible is what one finds one's self face to face with. Twelve years
should not have changed a pretty blonde thing of nineteen to a worn,
unintelligent-looking dowdy of the order of dowdiness which seems to
have lived beyond age and sex. She looked even stupid, or at least
stupefied. At this moment she was a silly, middle-aged woman, who did
not know what to do. For a few seconds Bettina wondered if she was glad
to see her, or only felt awkward and unequal to the situation.
"I can't believe you," she cried out again, and began to shiver. "Betty!
Little Betty? No! No! it isn't!"
She turned to the boy, who had lifted his chin from his stick, and was
staring.
"Ughtred! Ughtred!" she called to him. "Come! She says--she says----"
She sat down upon a clump of heather and began to cry. She hid her face
in her spare hands and broke into sobbing.
"Oh, Betty! No!" she gasped. "It's so long ago--it's so far away. You
never came--no one--no one--came!"
The hunchbacked boy drew near.
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