She was so helpless
in her pathetic, apologetic hysteria.
"I shall--be better," she gasped. "It's nothing. Ughtred, tell her."
"She's very weak, really," said the boy Ughtred, in his mature way. "She
can't help it sometimes. I'll get some water from the pool."
"Let me go," said Betty, and she darted down to the water. She was
back in a moment. The boy was rubbing and patting his mother's hands
tenderly.
"At any rate," he remarked, as one consoled by a reflection, "father is
not at home."
CHAPTER XI
"I THOUGHT YOU HAD ALL FORGOTTEN."
As, after a singular half hour spent among the bracken under the trees,
they began their return to the house, Bettina felt that her sense of
adventure had altered its character. She was still in the midst of a
remarkable sort of exploit, which might end anywhere or in anything,
but it had become at once more prosaic in detail and more intense in its
significance. What its significance might prove likely to be when
she faced it, she had not known, it is true. But this was different
from--from anything. As they walked up the sun-dappled avenue she kept
glancing aside at Rosy, and endeavouring to draw useful conclusions. The
poor girl's air of being a plain, insignificant frump, long past youth,
struck an extraordinary and, for the time, unexplainable note.
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