Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/276

262 out her companion's absences to have had for their ground that he was the lover of her stepmother, and that the lover of her stepmother could scarce logically pretend to a superior right to look after her. Maisie had by this time embraced the implication of a kind of natural divergence between lovers and little girls. It was just this indeed that could throw light on the probable contents of the pencilled note deposited on the hall-table in the Regent's Park, and which would greet Mrs. Beale on her return. Maisie freely figured it as provisionally jocular in tone, even though to herself, on this occasion, Sir Claude turned a graver face than he had shown in any crisis but that of putting her into the cab when she had been horrid to him after her parting with the Captain. He might really be embarrassed, but he would be sure, to her view, to have muffled in some bravado of pleasantry the disturbance produced at her father's by the removal of a valued servant. Not that there was n't a great deal too that would n't be in the note—a great deal for which a more comfortable place was Maisie's light little brain, where it hummed away hour after hour and caused the first outlook at Folkestone to swim in