Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/289

Rh It helped her to twist nearer. "Ill, mamma—really ill?"

She regretted her "really" as soon as she had spoken it; but there could n't be a better proof of her mother's present polish than that Ida showed no gleam of a temper to take it up. She had taken up at other times much tinier things. She only pressed Maisie's head against her bosom and said: "Shockingly, my dear. I must go to that new place."

"What new place?" Sir Claude inquired.

Ida thought, but could n't recall it. "Oh, 'Chose,' you know—where every one goes. I want some proper treatment. It 's all I 've ever asked for on earth. But that 's not what I came to say."

Sir Claude, in silence, folded one by one his newspapers; then he rose and stood whacking the palm of his hand with the bundle. "You 'll stop and dine with us?"

"Dear no—I can't dine at this sort of hour. I ordered dinner at Dover."

Her ladyship's tone in this one instance showed a certain superiority to those conditions in which her daughter had artlessly found Folkestone a paradise. It was yet not so crushing as to nip in the bud the