Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/162

148 which, as his companion stared, Sir Claude apparently felt that he must make his announcement fit with her recollections. "There 's nothing of that sort now."

But Maisie only stared the more. "They've changed?"

"Like your mother and me."

She wondered how he knew. "Then you 've seen Mrs. Beale again?"

He hesitated. "Oh, no. She has written to me," he presently pursued. "She's not afraid of your father either. No one at all is—really." Then he went on, while Maisie's little mind, with its filial spring too relaxed, from of old, for a pang at this want of parental majesty, speculated on the vague relation between Mrs. Beale's courage and the question, for Mrs. Wix and herself, of a neat lodging with their friend. "She would n't care a bit if Mr. Farange should make a row."

"Do you mean about you and me and Mrs. Wix? Why should she care? It would n't hurt her."

Sir Claude, with his legs out and his hand diving into his trousers' pocket, threw back his head with a laugh just perceptibly tempered, as she thought, by a sigh. "My dear