What Maisie Knew

one day, in the presence of that lady's thick colour and marked lines, as to wonder if it would occur to any one but herself to do so. Yet if she wasn't young then she was old; and this threw an odd light on her having a husband of a different generation. Mr. Farange was still older—that Maisie perfectly knew; and it brought her in due course to the perception of how much more, since Mrs. Beale was younger than Sir Claude, papa must be older than Mrs. Beale. Such discoveries were disconcerting and even a trifle confounding: these persons, it appeared, were not of the age they ought to be. This was somehow particularly the case with mamma, and the fact made her reflect with some relief on her not having gone with Mrs. Wix into the question of Sir Claude's attachment to his wife. She was conscious that in confining their attention to the state of her ladyship's own affections they had been controlled—Mrs. Wix perhaps in especial—by delicacy and even by embarrassment. The end of her colloquy with her stepfather in the schoolroom was her saying: "Then if we're not to see Mrs. Beale at all it isn't what she seemed to think when you came for me."

He looked rather blank. "What did she seem to think?"

"Why that I've brought you together."

"She thought that?" Sir Claude asked.

Maisie was surprised at his already forgetting it. "Just as I had brought papa and her. Don't you remember she said so?"

It came back to Sir Claude in a peal of laughter. "Oh yes—she said so!"

"And you said so," Maisie lucidly pursued.

He recovered, with increasing mirth, the whole occasion. "And you said so!" he retorted as if they were playing a game.

"Then were we all mistaken?"

He considered a little. "No, on the whole not. I dare say it's just what you have done. We are together—it's really most odd. She's thinking of us—of you and me—though we don't meet. And I've no doubt you'll find it will be all right when you go back to her."

"Am I going back to her?" Maisie brought out with a little gasp which was like a sudden clutch of the happy present.

It appeared to make Sir Claude grave a moment; it might have made him feel the weight of the pledge his action had given. "Oh some day, I suppose! We've plenty of time."

"I've such a tremendous lot to make up," Maisie said with a sense of great boldness.

"Certainly, and you must make up every hour of it. Oh I'll see that you do!"

This was encouraging; and to show cheerfully that she was reassured she replied: "That's what Mrs. Wix sees too."

"Oh yes," said Sir Claude; "Mrs. Wix and I are shoulder to shoulder."

Maisie took in a little this strong image; after which she exclaimed: "Then I've done it also to you and her—I've brought you together!"

"Blest if you haven't!" Sir Claude laughed. "And more, upon my word, than any of the lot. Oh you've done for us! Now if you could—as I suggested, you know, that day—only manage me and your mother!"

The child wondered. "Bring you and her together?"

"You see we're not together—not a bit. But I oughtn't to tell you such things; all the more that you won't really do it—not you. No, old chap," the young man continued; "there you'll break down. But it won't matter—we'll rub along. The great thing is that you and I are all right."

"We're all right!" Maisie echoed devoutly. But the next moment, in the light of what he had just said, she asked: "How shall I ever leave you?" It was as if she must somehow take care of him.

His smile did justice to her anxiety. "Oh well, you needn't! It won't come to that."

"Do you mean that when I do go you'll go with me?"

Sir Claude cast about. "Not exactly 'with' you perhaps; but I shall never be far off."

"But how do you know where mamma may take you?"

He laughed again. "I don't, I confess!" Then he had an idea, though something too jocose. "That will be for you to see—that she shan't take me too far."

"How can I help it?" Maisie enquired in surprise. "Mamma doesn't care for me," she said very simply. "Not really." Child as she was, her little long history was in the words; and it was as impossible to contradict her as if she had been venerable.

Sir Claude's silence was an admission of this, and still more the tone in which he presently replied: "That won't prevent her from—some time or other—leaving me with you."

"Then we'll live together?" she eagerly demanded.

"I'm afraid," said Sir Claude, smiling, "that that will be Mrs. Beale's real chance."

Her eagerness just slightly dropped at this; she remembered Mrs. Wix's pronouncement that it was all an extraordinary muddle. "To take me again? Well, can't you come to see me there?"

"Oh I dare say!"

Though there were parts of childhood Maisie had lost she had all childhood's preference for the particular promise. "Then you will come—you'll come often, won't you?" she insisted; while at the moment she spoke the door opened for the return of Mrs. Wix. Sir Claude hereupon, instead of replying, gave her a look which left her silent and embarrassed.

When he again found privacy convenient, however—which happened to be long in coming—he took up their conversation very much where it had dropped. "You see, my dear,