What Maisie Knew

run down. I fancied that in spite of your scramble you'd wait to cross, and it added to the reason I have for seeing you.'

Maisie wondered intensely what the reason could be, but she knew ever so much better than to ask. She was slightly surprised indeed to perceive that Sir Claude didn't, and to hear him immediately enquire: 'What in the name of goodness can you have to say to her?'

His tone was not exactly rude, but it was impatient enough to make his wife's response a fresh specimen of the new softness. 'That, my dear man, is all my own business.'

'Do you mean,' Sir Claude asked, 'that you wish me to leave you with her?'

'Yes, if you'll be so good; that's the extraordinary request I take the liberty of making.' Her ladyship had dropped to a mildness of irony by which, for a moment, poor Maisie was mystified and charmed, puzzled with a glimpse of something that in all the years had at intervals peeped out. Ida smiled at Sir Claude with the strange air she had on such occasions of defying an interlocutor to keep it up as long; her huge eyes, her red lips, the intense marks in her face formed an eclairage as distinct and public as a lamp set in a window. The child seemed quite to see in it the very beacon that had lighted her path; she suddenly found herself reflecting that it was no wonder the gentlemen were guided. This must have been the way mamma had first looked at Sir Claude; it brought back the lustre of the time they had outlived. It must have been the way she looked also at Mr. Perriam and Lord Eric; above all it contributed in Maisie's mind to a completer view of that satisfied state of the Captain. Our young lady grasped this idea with a quick lifting of the heart; there was a stillness during which her mother flooded her with a wealth of support to the Captain's striking tribute. This stillness remained long enough unbroken to represent that Sir Claude too might but be gasping again under the spell originally strong for him; so that Maisie quite hoped he would at least say something to show a recognition of how charming she could be.

What he presently said was: 'Are you putting up for the night?'

His wife cast grandly about. 'Not here—I've come from Dover.'

Over Maisie's head, at this, they still faced each other. 'You spend the night there?'

'Yes, I brought some things. I went to the hotel and hastily arranged; then I caught the train that whisked me on here. You see what a day I've had of it.'

The statement may surprise, but these were really as obliging if not as lucid words as, into her daughter's ears at least, Ida's lips had ever dropped; and there was a quick desire in the daughter that for the hour at any rate they should duly be welcomed as a ground of intercourse. Certainly mamma had a charm which, when turned on, became a large explanation; and the only danger now in an impulse to applaud it would be that of appearing to signalise its rarity. Maisie, however, risked the peril in the geniality of an admission that Ida had indeed had a rush; and she invited Sir Claude to expose himself by agreeing with her that the rush had been even worse than theirs. He appeared to meet this appeal by saying with detachment enough: 'You go back there to-night?'

'Oh yes—there are plenty of trains.' Again Sir Claude hesitated; it would have been hard to say if the child, between them, more connected or divided them. Then he brought out quietly: 'It will be late for you to knock about. I'll see you over.'

'You needn't trouble, thank you. I think you won't deny that I can help myself and that it isn't the first time in my dreadful life that I've somehow managed it.' Save for this allusion to her dreadful life they talked there, Maisie noted, as if they were only rather superficial friends; a special effect that she had often wondered at before in the midst of what she supposed to be intimacies. This effect was augmented by the almost casual manner in which her ladyship went on: 'I dare say I shall go abroad.'

'From Dover do you mean, straight?'

'How straight I can't say. I'm excessively ill.'

This for a minute struck Maisie as but a part of the conversation; at the end of which time she became aware that it ought to strike her—though it apparently didn't strike Sir Claude—as a part of something graver. It helped her to twist nearer. 'Ill, mamma—really ill?'

She regretted her 'really' as soon as she had spoken it; but there couldn't be a better proof of her mother's present polish than that Ida showed no gleam of a temper to take it up. She had taken up at other times much tinier things. She only pressed Maisie's head against her bosom and said: 'Shockingly, my dear. I must go to that new place.'

'What new place?' Sir Claude enquired.

Ida thought, but couldn't recall it. 'Oh 'Chose,' don't you know?—where every one goes. I want some proper treatment. It's all I've ever asked for on earth. But that's not what I came to say.'

Sir Claude, in silence, folded one by one his newspapers; then he rose and stood whacking the palm of his hand with the bundle. 'You'll stop and dine with us?'

'Dear no—I can't dine at this sort of hour. I ordered dinner at Dover.'

Her ladyship's tone in this one instance showed a certain superiority to those conditions in which her daughter had artlessly found Folkestone a paradise. It was yet not so crushing as to nip in the bud the eagerness with which the latter broke out: 'But won't you at least have a cup of tea?'

Ida kissed her again on the brow. 'Thanks, love. I had tea before coming.' She raised her eyes to Sir Claude. 'She is sweet!' He made no more answer than if he didn't agree; but Maisie was at ease about that and was still taken up with the joy of this happier pitch of their talk, which put more and more of a meaning into the Captain's version of her ladyship and literally kindled a conjecture that such an admirer might, over there at the other place, be waiting for her to dine. Was the same conjecture in Sir Claude's mind? He partly puzzled her, if it had risen there, by the slight perversity with which he returned to a question that his wife evidently thought she had disposed of.

He whacked his hand again with his paper. 'I had really much better take you.'

'And leave Maisie here alone?'

Mamma so clearly didn't want it that Maisie leaped at the vision of a Captain who had seen her on from Dover and who, while he waited to take her back, would be hovering just at the same distance at which, in Kensington Gardens, the companion of his walk had herself hovered. Of course, however, instead of breathing any such guess she let Sir Claude reply; all the more that his reply could contribute so much to her own present grandeur. 'She won't be alone when she has a maid in attendance.'

Maisie had never before had so much of a retinue, and she waited also to enjoy the action of it on her ladyship.