... She touched her horse unconsciously,
and stared out between his ears, sitting upright and alert again.
It was not a great deal that met the eye, but it was so disposed as to
suggest a great deal more. Far away to the right lay a faint haze, and
in it appeared towers and spires, with gleams of sharp white here and
there, where some tall building rose above the dark roofs. To the left
again appeared similar signs of another town--the same haze, towers and
spires--linked to the first. She knew what they were; she had heard half
a dozen times already of the two towns that made London--running
continuously in one long line, however, which grew thin by St. Mary's
Hospital and St. Martin's, she was told--the two troops of houses and
churches that had grown up about the two centres of Court and City,
Westminster and the City itself. But it was none the less startling to
see these with her proper eyes.
Presently, in spite of herself, as she saw the spire of St. Clement's
Dane, where she was told they must turn City-wards, she began to talk,
and Anthony to answer.
II
Dark was beginning to fall and the lamps to be lighted as they rode in
at last half an hour later, across the Fleet Ditch, through Ludgate and
turned up towards Cheapside. They were to stay at an inn where Anthony
was accustomed to lodge when he was not with friends--an inn, too, of
which the landlord was in sympathy with the old ways, and where friends
could come and go without suspicion.
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