Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/192

178 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 the 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 is n't mamma!"