Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/15

 WHAT MAISIE KNEW

litigation had seemed interminable, and had in fact been complicated; but, by the decision on the appeal, the judgment of the divorce-court was confirmed as to the assignment of the child. The father, who, though bespattered from head to foot, had made good his case, was, in pursuance of this triumph, appointed to keep her: it was not so much that the mother's character had been more absolutely damaged as that the brilliancy of a lady's complexion (and this lady's, in court, was immensely remarked), might be more regarded as showing the spots. Attached, however, to the second announcement was a condition that detracted, for Beale Farange, from its sweetness,—an order that he should refund to his late wife the twenty-six hundred pounds put down by her, as it was called, some three years before, in the interest of her child's maintenance, and precisely on a proved understanding that