Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/285

Rh more brave: "A little more and you 'd have been too late." It stuck in her throat, but she brought it out. "We're going to France."

Ida was magnificent; Ida kissed her on the forehead. "That 's just what I thought likely—it made me decide to run down. I fancied that in spite of your scramble you 'd wait to cross, and it added to the reason I have for seeing you."

Maisie wondered intensely what the reason could be, but she knew ever so much better than to ask. She was slightly surprised indeed to perceive that Sir Claude did n't, and to hear him immediately inquire: "What in the name of goodness can you have to say to her?"

His tone was not exactly rude, but it was impatient enough to make his wife's response a fresh specimen of the new softness. "That, my dear man, is all my own business."

"Do you mean," Sir Claude asked, "that you wish me to leave you with her?"

"Yes—if you 'll be so good. That 's the extraordinary request I take the liberty of making." Her ladyship had dropped to a mildness of irony by which, for a moment,