[The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett]@TWC D-Link book
The Shuttle

CHAPTER IX
18/19

But, as we drove across Waterloo Bridge, I caught a glimpse of the Tower, and what do you suppose I began to think of?
It was monstrous.

I saw a door in the Tower and the stone steps, and the square space, and in the chill clear, early morning a little slender, helpless girl led out, a little, fair, real thing like Rosy, all alone--everyone she belonged to far away, not a man near who dared utter a word of pity when she turned her awful, meek, young, desperate eyes upon him.

She was a pious child, and, no doubt, she lifted her eyes to the sky.

I wonder if it was blue and its blueness broke her heart, because it looked as if it might have pitied such a young, patient girl thing led out in the fair morning to walk to the hacked block and give her trembling pardon to the black-visored man with the axe, and then 'commending her soul to God' to stretch her sweet slim neck out upon it." "Oh, Betty, dear!" Mrs.Worthington expostulated.
Bettina sprang to her and took her hand in pretty appeal.
"I beg pardon! I beg pardon, I really do," she exclaimed.

"I did not intend deliberately to be painful.


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