Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/262

248 mentioned. The next minute the Countess had kissed her and exclaimed to Beale with bright, tender reproach: "Why, you never told me half! My dear child," she cried, "it was awfully nice of you to come!"

"But she has n't come—she won't come!" Beale exclaimed. "I 've put it to her how much you 'd like it, but she declines to have anything to do with us."

The Countess stood smiling, and after an instant that was mainly taken up with the shock of her weird aspect Maisie felt herself reminded of another smile, which was not ugly, though also interested—the kind light thrown, that day in the Park, from the clean, fair face of the Captain. Papa's Captain—yes—was the Countess; but she wasn't nearly so nice as the other: it all came back, doubtless, to Maisie' s minor appreciation of ladies. "Should n't you like me," said this one endearingly, "to take you to Spa?"

"To Spa?" The child repeated the name to gain time, not to show how the Countess brought back to her a dim remembrance of a strange woman with a horrid face, who once, years before, in an omnibus, bending to her from an opposite seat, had suddenly produced an orange and murmured: "Little dearie,