Other people,
in their presence, were apt to feel mysteriously ignoble and to
become secretly uneasy about ancestors, gloves, and pronunciation. The
Magsworth Bitts manner was withholding and reserved, though sometimes
gracious, granting small smiles as great favours and giving off a
chilling kind of preciousness. Naturally, when any citizen of the
community did anything unconventional or improper, or made a mistake, or
had a relative who went wrong, that citizen's first and worst fear
was that the Magsworth Bittses would hear of it. In fact, this painful
family had for years terrorized the community, though the community
had never realized that it was terrorized, and invariably spoke of the
family as the "most charming circle in town." By common consent, Mrs.
Roderick Magsworth Bitts officiated as the supreme model as well as
critic-in-chief of morals and deportment for all the unlucky people
prosperous enough to be elevated to her acquaintance.
Magsworth was the important part of the name. Mrs. Roderick Magsworth
Bitts was a Magsworth born, herself, and the Magsworth crest decorated
not only Mrs. Magsworth Bitts' note-paper but was on the china, on the
table linen, on the chimney-pieces, on the opaque glass of the front
door, on the victoria, and on the harness, though omitted from the
garden-hose and the lawn-mower.
Naturally, no sensible person dreamed of connecting that illustrious
crest with the unfortunate and notorious Rena Magsworth whose name had
grown week by week into larger and larger type upon the front pages of
newspapers, owing to the gradually increasing public and official belief
that she had poisoned a family of eight.
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