Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/282

268 spring, rattle down over shining shop-fronts. The light of foreign travel was darkened at a stroke; she had a horrible sense that they were caught; and for the first time in her life, in Ida's presence, she so far translated an impulse into an invidious act as to clutch straight at the hand of her responsible confederate. It did n't help her that he appeared at first equally hushed with horror; a minute during which, in the empty garden, with its long shadows on the lawn, its blue sea over the hedge and its startled peace in the air, both her elders remained as stiff as tall tumblers filled to the brim and held straight for fear of a spill. At last, in a tone that, in its unexpected softness, enriched the whole surprise, her mother said to Sir Claude: "Do you mind at all my speaking to her?"

"Oh, no; do you?" His reply was so long in coming that Maisie was the first to find the right note.

He laughed as he seemed to take it from her, and she felt a sufficient concession in his manner of addressing their visitor. "How in the world did you know we were here?"

His wife, at this, came the rest of the way and sat down on the bench with a hand laid