Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/300

286 a significance for a little person trained, in that relation, from an early age, to keep an eye on manual motions, and its possible bearing was not darkened by the memory of the handful of gold that Susan Ash would never, never believe Mrs. Beale had sent back—"not she; she's too false and too greedy!"—to the munificent Countess. To have guessed, none the less, that her ladyship's purse might confess an identity with the token extracted from the rustling covert of her rear—this suspicion gave on the spot to the child's eyes a direction carefully distant. It added moreover to the optimism that for the hour could ruffle the surface of her deep diplomacy, ruffle it to the point of making her forget that she had never been safe unless she had also been stupid. She in short forgot her habitual caution in her impulse to adopt her ladyship's practical interests and show her ladyship how perfectly she understood them. She saw without looking that her mother pressed a little clasp; heard without wanting to the sharp click that marked the closing of a portemonnaie from which something had been taken. What this was she just did n't see: it was not too substantial to be locked with ease in the fold of her ladyship's fingers.