Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/163

Rh stepchild, you 're delightful! Look here, we must pay. You 've had five buns?"

"How can you?" Maisie demanded, crimson under the eye of the young woman who had stepped to their board. "I 've had three."

Shortly after this Mrs. Wix looked so ill that it was to be feared her ladyship had treated her to some unexampled passage. Maisie asked if anything worse than usual had occurred, whereupon the poor woman brought out with infinite gloom: "He has been seeing Mrs. Beale!"

"Sir Claude?" The child remembered what he had said. "Oh, no—not seeing her!"

"I beg your pardon. I absolutely know it." Mrs. Wix was as positive as she was dismal.

Maisie nevertheless ventured to challenge her. "And how, please, do you know it?"

She faltered a moment. "From herself. I 've been to see her." Then, on Maisie's visible surprise, "I went yesterday while you were out with him. He has seen her repeatedly."

It was not wholly clear to Maisie why Mrs. Wix should be prostrate at this discovery;