Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/271

Rh combined to carry through the adventure and to give it the air of having owed its success to the fact that Mrs. Beale had, as Susan said, but just stepped out. When Sir Claude, watch in hand, had met this fact with the exclamation "Then pack Miss Farange and come off with us!" there had ensued on the stairs a series of gymnastics of a nature to bring Miss Farange's heart into her mouth. She sat with Sir Claude in a fourwheeler while he still held his watch; held it longer than any doctor who had ever felt her pulse, long enough to give her a vision of something like the ecstasy of neglecting such an opportunity to show impatience. The ecstasy had begun in the schoolroom and over the Berceuse, quite in the manner of the same foretaste on the day, a little while back, when Susan had panted up and she herself, after the hint about the Duchess, had sailed down; for what harm then had there been in drops and disappointments if she could still have, even only a moment, the sensation of such a name "brought up"? It had remained with her that her father had told her she would some day be in the street, but it clearly wouldn't be this day; and she felt justified of her preference as soon as her