Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/140

126 still greater distance. "Why, my dear, just from awful misery."

 XII

had at the moment not explained her ominous speech, but the light of remarkable events soon enabled her companion to read it. It may indeed be said that these days brought on a high quickening of Maisie's direct perceptions, of her gratified sense of arriving by herself at conclusions. This was helped by an emotion intrinsically far from sweet—the increase of the alarm that had most haunted her meditations. She had no need to be told, as on the morrow of the revelation of Sir Claude's danger she was told by Mrs. Wix, that her mother wanted more and more to know why the devil her father did n't send for her. She had too long expected that mamma's curiosity on this point would break out with violence. Maisie could meet such pressure so far as meeting it was to be in a position to reply, in words directly inspired, that papa would be hanged before he 'd again be saddled with her. She therefore recognized the hour that in troubled