Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/240

226 explanations continued to hang fire, twenty minutes that, in their sudden drop of danger, affected her, though there were neither buns nor ginger-beer, like an extemporized costly treat.

"Is she very rich?" He had begun to strike her as almost embarrassed, so shy that he might have found himself with a young lady with whom he had little in common. She was literally moved by this apprehension to offer him some tactful relief.

Beale Farange stood and smiled at his young lady, his back to the fanciful fireplace, his light overcoat—the very lightest in London—wide open and his wonderful lustrous beard completely concealing the expanse of his shirt-front. It pleased her more than ever to think that papa was handsome and, though as high aloft as mamma and almost, in his specially florid evening dress, as splendid, of a beauty somewhat less belligerent, less terrible. "The Countess? Why do you ask me that?"

Maisie's eyes opened wider. "Is she a Countess?"

There was an unaccustomed geniality in his enjoyment of her wonder. "Oh, yes, my dear—but it is n't an English title."