"Why I've broken my word to you so dreadfully—promising so solemnly and then never coming? Well, my dear, that's a question that, not seeing me day after day, you must very often have put to Mrs. Beale."
"Oh yes," the child replied; "again and again."
"And what has she told you?"
"That you're as bad as you're beautiful."
"Is that what she says?"
"Those very words."
"Ah the dear old soul!" Sir Claude was much diverted, and his loud, clear laugh was all his explanation. Those were just the words Maisie had last heard him use about Mrs. Wix. She clung to his hand, which was encased in a pearl-grey glove ornamented with the thick black lines that, at her mother's, always used to strike her as connected with the way the bestitched fists of the long ladies carried, with the elbows well out, their umbrellas upside down. The mere sense of his grasp in her own covered the ground of loss just as much as the ground of gain. His presence was like an object brought so close to her face that she couldn't see round its edges. He himself, however, remained showman of the spectacle even after they had passed out of the Park and begun, under the charm of the spot and the season, to stroll in Kensington Gardens. What they had left behind them was, as he said, only a pretty bad circus, and, through prepossessing gates and over a bridge, they had come in a quarter of an hour, as he also remarked, a hundred miles from London. A great green glade was before them, and high old trees, and under the shade of these, in the fresh turf, the crooked course of a rural footpath. "It's the Forest of Arden," Sir Claude had just delightfully observed, "and I'm the banished duke, and you're—what was the young woman called?—the artless country wench. And there," he went on, "is the other girl—what's her name, Rosalind?—and (don't you know?) the fellow who was making up to her. Upon my word he is making up to her!"
His allusion was to a couple who, side by side, at the end of the glade, were moving in the same direction as themselves. These distant figures, in their slow stroll (which kept them so close together that their heads, drooping a little forward, almost touched), presented the back of a lady who looked tall, who was evidently a very fine woman, and that of a gentleman whose left hand appeared to be passed well into her arm while his right, behind him, made jerky motions with the stick that it grasped. Maisie's fancy responded for an instant to her friend's idea that the sight was idyllic; then, stopping short, she brought out with all her clearness: "Why mercy—if it isn't mamma!"
Sir Claude paused with a stare. "Mamma? But mamma's at Brussels."
Maisie, with her eyes on the lady, wondered. "At Brussels?"
"She's gone to play a match."
"At billiards? You didn't tell me."
"Of course I didn't!" Sir Claude ejaculated. "There's plenty I don't tell you. She went on Wednesday."
The couple had added to their distance, but Maisie's eyes more than kept pace with them. "Then she has come back."
Sir Claude watched the lady. "It's much more likely she never went!"
"It's mamma!" the child said with decision.
They had stood still, but Sir Claude had made the most of his opportunity, and it happened that just at this moment, at the end of the vista, the others halted and, still showing only their backs, seemed to stay talking. "Right you are, my duck!" he exclaimed at last. "It's my own sweet wife!"
He had spoken with a laugh, but he had changed colour, and Maisie quickly looked away from him. "Then who is it with her?"
"Blest if I know!" said Sir Claude.
"Is it Mr. Perriam?"
"Oh dear no—Perriam's smashed."
"Smashed?"
"Exposed—in the City. But there are quantities of others!" Sir Claude smiled.
Maisie appeared to count them; she studied the gentleman's back. "Then is this Lord Eric?"
For a moment her companion made no answer, and when she turned her eyes again to him he was looking at her, she thought, rather queerly. "What do you know about Lord Eric?"
She tried innocently to be odd in return. "Oh I know more than you think! Is it Lord Eric?" she repeated.
"It maybe. Blest if I care!"
Their friends had slightly separated and now, as Sir Claude spoke, suddenly faced round, showing all the splendour of her ladyship and all the mystery of her comrade. Maisie held her breath. "They're coming!"
"Let them come." And Sir Claude, pulling out his cigarettes, began to strike a light.
"We shall meet them!"
"No. They'll meet us."
Maisie stood her ground. "They see us. Just look."
Sir Claude threw away his match. "Come straight on."
