Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/318

304 an equality than she had yet imagined; but it had also more the effect of raising her up than of letting him down, and what it did with her was shown by the sound of her assent.

"Yes—I know!" What she knew, what she could know, is by this time no secret to us: it grew and grew, at any rate, the rest of that day, in the air of what he took for granted. It was better he should do that than attempt to test her knowledge; but there, at the worst, was the gist of the matter: it was open between them at last that their great change, as, speaking as if it had already lasted weeks, Maisie called it, was somehow built up round Mrs. Wix. Before she went to bed that night she knew, further, that Sir Claude, since, as he called it, they had been on the rush, had received more telegrams than one. But they separated again without speaking of Mrs. Beale.

Oh, what a crossing for the straighteners and the old brown dress—which latter appurtenance the child saw thriftily revived for the possible disasters of travel! The wind got up in the night, and from her little room at the inn Maisie could hear the noise of the sea. The next day it was raining and everything different: this was the case even