This interruption of the pleasure sights was alone in its kind. Pitt let the subject that day so thoroughly handled thenceforth drift out of sight; he referred to it no more; and continually, day after day, he gave himself up to the care of providing new entertainment for his guests. Drives into the country, parties on the river, visits to grand places, to picture galleries, to curiosities, to the British Museum, alternated with and succeeded each other. Pitt seemed untireable. Mrs. Dallas was in a high state of contentment, trusting that all things were going well for her hopes concerning her son and Miss Frere; but Betty herself was going through an experience of infinite pain. It was impossible not to enjoy at the moment these enjoyable things; the life at Pitt's old Kensington house was like a fairy tale for strangeness and prettiness; but Betty was living now under a clear impression of the fact that it was a fairy tale, and that she must presently walk out of it. And gradually the desire grew uppermost with her to walk out of it soon, while she could do so with grace and of her own accord. The pretty house which she had so delighted in began to oppress her. She would presently be away, and have no more to do with it; and somebody else would be brought there to reign and enjoy as mistress. It tormented Betty, that thought. Somebody else would come there, would have a right there; would be cherished and cared for and honoured, and have the privilege of standing by Pitt in his works and plans, helping him, and sympathizing with him. A floating image of a fair, stately woman, with speaking grey eyes and a wonderful pure face, would come before her when she thought of these things, though she told herself it was little likely that she would be the one; yet Betty could think of no other, and almost felt superstitiously sure at last that Esther it would be, in spite of everything. Esther it would be, she was almost sure, if she, Betty, spoke one little word of information; would she have done well to speak it? Now it was too late.

'I think, Mrs. Dallas,' she began, one day, 'I cannot stay much longer with you. Probably you and Mr. Dallas may make up your minds to remain here all the winter; I should think you would. If I can hear of somebody going home that I know, I will go, while the season is good.'

Mrs. Dallas roused up, and objected vehemently. Betty persisted.

'I am in a false position here,' she said. 'It was all very well at first; things came about naturally, and it could not be helped; and I am sure I have enjoyed it exceedingly; but, dear Mrs. Dallas, I cannot stay here always, you know. I am ashamed to remember how long it is already.'

'My dear, I am sure my son is delighted to have you,' said Mrs. Dallas, looking at her.

'He is not delighted at all,' said Betty, half laughing. Poor girl, she was not in the least light-hearted; bitterness can laugh as easily as pleasure sometimes. 'He is a very kind friend, and a perfect host; but there is no reason why he should care about my coming or going, you know.'

'Everybody must care to have you come, and be sorry to have you go,
Betty.'

'"Everybody" is a general term, ma'am, and always leaves room for important exceptions. I shall have his respect, and my own too, better if I go now.'

'My dear, I cannot have you!' said Mrs. Dallas uneasily, but afraid to ask a question. 'No, we shall not stay here for the winter. Wait a little longer, Betty, and we will take you down into the country, and make the tour of England. It is more beautiful than you can conceive. Wait till we have seen Westminster Abbey; and then we will go. You can grant me that, my dear?'

Betty did not know how to refuse.

'Has Pitt got over his extravagancies of last year?' the older lady ventured, after a pause.

'I do not think he gets over anything,' said Betty, with inward bitter assurance.

The day came that had been fixed for a visit to the Abbey. Pitt had not been eager to take them there; had rather put it off. He told his mother that one visit to Westminster Abbey was nothing; that two visits were nothing; that a long time and many hours spent in study and enjoyment of the place were necessary before one could so much as begin to know Westminster Abbey. But Mrs. Dallas had declared she did not want to know it; she only desired to see it and see the monuments; and what could be answered to that? So the visit was agreed upon and fixed for this day.

'You did not want to bring us here, because you thought we would not appreciate it?' Betty said to Pitt, in an aside, as they were about entering.

'Nobody can appreciate it who takes it lightly,' he answered.

That day remained fixed in Betty's memory for ever, with all its details, sharp cut in. The moment they entered the building, the greatness and beauty of the place seemed to overshadow her, and roused up all the higher part of her nature. With that, it stirred into keen life the feeling of being shut out from the life she wanted. The Abbey, with the rest of all the wonders and antiquities and rich beauties of the city, belonged to the accessories of Pitt's position and home; belonged so in a sort to him; and the sense of the beauty which she could not but feel met in the girl's heart with the pain which she could not bid away, and the one heightened the other, after the strange fashion that pain and pleasure have of sharpening each other's powers. Betty took in with an intensity of perception all the riches of the Abbey that she was capable of understanding; and her capacity in that way was far beyond the common. She never in her life had been quicker of appreciation. The taste of beauty and the delight of curiosity were at times exquisite; never failing to meet and heighten that underlying pain which had so moved her whole nature to sentient life. For the commonplace and the indifferent she had to-day no toleration at all; they were regarded with impatient loathing. Accordingly, the progress round the Poets' corner, which Mrs. Dallas would make slowly, was to Betty almost intolerable. She must go as the rest went, but she went making silent protest.

'You do not care for the poets, Miss Betty,' remarked Mr. Dallas jocosely.

'I see here very few names of poets that I care about,' she responded. 'To judge by the rest, I should say it was about as much of an honour to be left out of Westminster Abbey as to be put in.'

'Fie, fie, Miss Betty! what heresy is here! Westminster Abbey! why, it is the one last desire of ambition.'

'I am beginning to think ambition is rather an empty thing, sir.'

'See, here is Butler. Don't you read Hudibras?'

'No, sir.'

'You should. It's very clever. Then here is Spenser, next to him. You are devoted to The Faerie Queene, of course!'

'I never read it.'

'You might do worse,' remarked Pitt, who was just before them with his mother.

'Does anybody read Spenser now?'

'It is a poor sign for the world if they do not.'

'One cannot read everything,' said Betty. 'I read Shakspeare; I am glad to see his monument.'

It was a relief to pass on at last from the crowd of literary folk into the nobler parts of the Abbey; and yet, as the impression of its wonderful beauty and solemn majesty first fully came upon Miss Frere, it was oddly accompanied by an instant jealous pang: 'He will bring somebody else here some day, who will come as often as she likes, be at home here, and enjoy the Abbey as if it were her own property.' And Betty wished she had never come; and in the same inconsistent breath was exceedingly rejoiced that she had come. Yes, she would take all of the beauty in that she could; take it and keep it in her memory for ever; taste it while she had it, and live on the after-taste for the rest of her life. But the taste of it was at the moment sharp with pain.

Pitt had procured from one of the canons, who had been his uncle's friend, an order which permitted them to go their own way and take their own time, unaccompanied and untrammelled by vergers. No showman was necessary in Pitt's presence; he could tell them all, and much more than they cared about knowing. Mrs. Dallas, indeed, cared for little beyond the tokens of England's antiquity and glory; her interest was mostly expended on the royal tombs and those connected with them. For was not Pitt now, virtually, one of the favoured nation, by habit and connection as well as in blood? and did not England's greatness send down a reflected light on all her sons?—only poetical justice, as it was earlier sons who had made the greatness. But of that Mrs. Dallas did not think. 'England' was an abstract idea of majesty and power, embodied in a land and a government; and Westminster Abbey was in a sort the record and visible token of the same, and testimony of it, in the face of all the world. So Mrs. Dallas enjoyed Westminster Abbey, and her heart swelled in contemplation of its glories; but its real glories she saw not. Lights and shadows, colouring, forms of beauty, associations of tenderness, majesties of age, had all no existence for her. The one feeling in exercise, which took its nourishment from all she looked upon, was pride. But pride is a dull kind of gratification; and the good lady's progress through the Abbey could not be called satisfactory to one who knew the place.

Mr. Dallas was neither proud nor pleased. He was, however, an Englishman, and Westminster Abbey was intensely English, and to go through and look at it was the right thing to do; so he went; doing his duty.

And beside these two went another bit of humanity, all alive and quivering, intensely sensitive to every impression, which must needs be more or less an impression of suffering. Her folly, she told herself, it was which had so stripped her of her natural defences, and exposed her to suffering. The one only comfort left was, that nobody knew it; and nobody should know it. The practice of society had given her command over herself, and she exerted it that day; all she had.

They were making the tour of St. Edmund's chapel.

'Look here, Betty,' cried Mrs. Dallas, who was still a little apart from the others with her son,—'come here and see this! Look here—the tomb of two little children of Edward III.!'

'After going over some of the other records, ma'am, I can but call them happy to have died little.'

'But isn't it interesting? Pitt tells me there were six of the little princess's brothers and sisters that stood here at her funeral, the Black Prince among them. Just think of it! Around this tomb!'

'Why should it be more interesting to us than any similar gathering of common people? There is many a spot in country graveyards at home where more than six members of a family have stood together.'

'But, my dear, these were Edward the Third's children.'

'Yes. He was something when he was alive; but what is he to us now? And why should we care,'—Betty hastily went on to generalities, seeing the astonishment in Mrs. Dallas's face,—'why should we be more interested in the monuments and deaths of the great, than in those of lesser people? In death and bereavement all come down to a common humanity.'

'Not a common humanity!' said Mrs. Dallas, rather staring at Betty.

'All are alike on the other side, mother,' observed Pitt. 'The king's daughter and the little village girl stand on the same footing, when once they have left this state of things. There is only one nobility that can make any difference then.'

'"One nobility!"' repeated Mrs. Dallas, bewildered.

'You remember the words,—"Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my mother, and my sister, and brother." The village girl will often turn out to be the daughter of the King then.'

'But you do not think, do you,' said Betty, 'that all that one has gained in this life will be lost, or go for nothing? Education—knowledge—refinement,—all that makes one man or woman really greater and nobler and richer than another,—will that be all as though it had not been?—no advantage?'

'What we know of the human mind forbids us to think so. Also, the analogy of God's dealings forbids it. The child and the fully developed philosopher do not enter the other world on an intellectual level; we cannot suppose it. But, all the gain on the one side will go to heighten his glory or to deepen his shame, according to the fact of his having been a servant of God or no.'

'I don't know where you are getting to!' said Mrs. Dallas a little vexedly.

'If we are to proceed at this rate,' suggested her husband, 'we may as well get leave to spend all the working days of a month in the Abbey. It will take us all that.'

'After all,' said Betty as they moved, 'you did not explain why we should be so much more interested in this tomb of Edward the Third's children than in that of any farmer's family?'

'My dear,' said Mrs. Dallas, 'I am astonished to hear you speak so. Are not you interested?'

'Yes ma'am; but why should I be? For really, often the farmer's family is the more respectable of the two.'

'Are you such a republican, Betty? I did not know it.'

'There is a reason, though,' said Pitt, repressing a smile, 'which even a republican may allow. The contrast here is greater. The glory and pomp of earthly power is here brought into sharp contact with the nothingness of it, So much yesterday,—so little to-day. Those uplifted hands in prayer are exceedingly touching, when one remembers that all their mightiness has come down to that!'

'It is not every fool that thinks so,' remarked Mr. Dallas ambiguously.

'No,' said Betty, with a sudden impulse of championship; 'fools do not think at all.'

'Here is a tablet to Lady Knollys,' said Pitt, moving on. 'She was a niece of Anne Boleyn, and waited upon her to the scaffold.'

'But that is only a tablet,' said Mrs. Dallas. 'Who is this, Pitt?' She was standing before an effigy that bore a coronet; Betty beside her.

'That is the Duchess of Suffolk; the mother of Lady Jane Grey.'

'I see,' said Betty, 'that the Abbey is the complement of the Tower. Her daughter and her husband lie there, under the pavement of the chapel. How comes she to be here?'

'Her funeral was after Elizabeth came to the throne. But she had been in miserable circumstances, poor woman, before that.'

'I wonder she lived at all,' said Betty, 'after losing husband and daughter in that fashion! But people do bear a great deal and live through it!'

Which words had an application quite private to the speaker, and which no one suspected. And while the party were studying the details of the tomb of John of Eltham, Pitt explaining and the others trying to take it in, Betty stood by with passionate thoughts. 'They do not care,' she said to herself; 'but he will bring some one else here, some day, who will care; and they will come and come to the Abbey, and delight themselves in its glories, and in each other, alternately. What do I here? and what is the English Abbey to me?'

She showed no want of interest, however, and no wandering of thought; on the contrary, an intelligent, thoughtful, gracious attention to everything she saw and everything she heard. Her words, she knew, though she could not help it, were now and then flavoured with bitterness.

In the next chapel Mrs. Dallas heard with much sympathy and wonder the account of Catharine of Valois and her remains.

'I don't think she ought to lie in the vault of Sir George Villiers, if he was father of the Duke of Buckingham,' she exclaimed.

'That Duke of Buckingham had more honour than belonged to him, in life and in death,' said Betty.

'It does not make much difference now,' said Pitt.

They went on to the chapel of Henry VII. And here, and on the way thither, Betty almost for a while forgot her troubles in the exceeding majesty and beauty of the place. The power of very exquisite beauty, which always and in all forms testifies to another world where its source and its realization are, came down upon her spirit, and hushed it as with a breath of balm; and the littleness of this life, of any one individual's life, in the midst of the efforts here made to deny it, stood forth in most impressive iteration. Betty was awed and quieted for a minute. Mr. and Mrs. Dallas were moved differently.

'And this was Henry the Seventh's work!' exclaimed Mr. Dallas, making an effort to see all round him at once. 'Well, I didn't know they could build so well in those old times. Let us see; when was he buried?—1509? That is pretty long ago. This is a beautiful building! And that is his tomb, eh? I should say this is better than anything he had in his lifetime. Being king of England was not just so easy to him as his son found it. Crowns are heavy in the best of times; and his was specially.'

'It is a strange ambition, though, to be glorified so in one's funeral monument,' said Betty.

'A very common ambition,' remarked Pitt. 'But this chapel was to be much more than a monument. It was a chantry. The king ordered ten thousand masses to be said here for the repose of his soul; and intended that the monkish establishment should remain for ever to attend to them. Here around his tomb you see the king's particular patron saints,—nine of them,—to whom he looked for help in time of need; all over the chapel you will find the four national saints, if I may so call them, of the kingdom; and at the end there is the Virgin Mary, with Peter and Paul, and other saints and angels innumerable. The whole chapel is like those touching folded hands of stone we were speaking of,—a continual appeal, through human and angelic mediation, fixed in stone; though at the beginning also living in the chants of the monks.'

'Well, I am sure that is being religious!' said Mrs. Dallas. 'If such a place as this does not honour religion, I don't know what does.'

'Mother, Christ said, "I am the door."'

'Yes, my dear, but is not all this an appeal to Him?'

'Mother, he said, "He that believeth on me hath everlasting life." What have saints and angels to do with it? "He that belieth."'

'Surely the builder of all this must have believed,' said Mrs. Dallas, 'or he would never have spent so much money and taken so much pains about it.'

'If he had believed on Christ, mother, he would have known he had no need. Think of those ten thousand masses to be said for him, that his sins might be forgiven and his soul received into heaven; you see how miserably uncertain the poor king felt of ever getting there.'

'Well,' said Mrs. Dallas, 'every one must feel uncertain! He cannot know—how can he know?'

'How can he live and not know?' Pitt answered in a lowered tone. 'Uncertainty on that point would be enough to drive a thinking man mad. Henry the Seventh, you see, could not bear it, and so he arranged to have ten thousand masses said for him, and filled his chapel with intercessory saints.'

'But I do not see how any one is to have certainty, Mr. Pitt,' Betty said. 'One cannot see into the future.'

'It is only necessary to believe, in the present.'

'Believe what?'

'The word of the King, who promised,—"Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." The love that came down here to die for us will never let slip any poor creature that trusts it.'

'Yes; but suppose one cannot trust so?' objected Betty.

'Then there is probably a reason for it. Disobedience, even partial disobedience, cannot perfectly trust.'

'How can sinful creatures do anything perfectly, Pitt?' his mother asked, almost angrily.

'Mamma,' said he gravely, 'you trust me so.'

Mrs. Dallas made no reply to that; and they moved on, surveying the chapels. The good lady bowed her head in solemn approbation when shown the place whence the bodies of Cromwell and others of his family and friends were cast out after the Restoration. 'They had no business to be there,' she assented.

'Where were they removed to?' Betty asked.

'Some of them were hanged, as they deserved,' said Mr. Dallas.

'Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw, at Tyburn,' Pitt added. 'The others were buried, not honourably, not far off. One of Cromwell's daughters, who was a Churchwoman and also a royalist, they allowed to remain in the Abbey. She lies in one of the other chapels, over yonder.'

'Noble revenge!' said Betty quietly.

'Very proper,' said Mrs. Dallas. 'It seems hard, but it is proper. People who rise up against their kings should be treated with dishonour, both before and after death.'

'How about the kings who rise up against their people?' asked Betty.

She could not help the question, but she was glad that Mrs. Dallas did not seem to hear it. They passed on, from one chapel to another, going more rapidly; came to a pause again at the tomb of Mary, Queen of Scots.

'I am beginning to think,' said Betty, 'that the history of England is one of the sorrowfullest things in the world. I wonder if all other countries are as bad? Think of this woman's troublesome, miserable life; and now, after Fotheringay, the honour in which she lies in this temple is such a mockery! I suppose Elizabeth is here somewhere?'

'Over there, in the other aisle. And below, the two Tudor queens, Elizabeth and Mary, lie in a vault together, alone. Personal rivalries, personal jealousies, political hatred and religious enmity,—they are all composed now; and all interests fade away before the one supreme, eternal; they are gone where "the honour that cometh from God" is the only honour left. Well for them if they have that! Here is the Countess of Richmond, the mother of Henry VII. She was of kin or somehow connected, it is said, with thirty royal personages; the grand-daughter of Catharine of Valois, grandmother of Henry VIII., Elizabeth's great-grandmother. She was, by all accounts, a noble old lady. Now all that is left is these pitiful folded hands.'

Mrs. Dallas passed on, and they went from chapel to chapel, and from tomb to tomb, with unflagging though transient interest. But for Betty, by and by the brain and sense seemed to be oppressed and confused by the multitude of objects, of names and stories and sympathies. The novelty wore off, and a feeling of some weariness supervened; and therewith the fortunes and fates of the great past fell more and more into the background, and her own one little life-venture absorbed her attention. Even when going round the chapel of Edward the Confessor and viewing the grand old tombs of the magnates of history who are remembered there, Betty was mostly concerned with her own history; 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. Not outward dishonour, and yet the worst possible; dishonour in her own eyes. What a fool she had been, to meddle in this business at all! She had done it with her eyes open, trusting that she could exercise her power upon anybody and yet remain in her own power. Just the reverse of that had come to pass, and she had nobody to blame but herself. If Pitt was leaving his father and mother in England, to go to New York, it could be on only one business. The game, for her, was up.

There were weeks of torture before her, she knew,—slow torture,—during which she must show as little of what she felt as an Indian at the stake. She must be with Mrs. Dallas, and hear the whole matter talked of, and from point to point as the history went on; and must help talk of it. For if Pitt was going to New York now, Betty was not; that was a fixed thing. She must stay for the present where she was.

She was a little pale and tired, they said on the drive home. And that was all anybody ever knew.