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308 at the hotel. It was perhaps half an effect of her present renovation—as if her clothes had been somebody's else: she had at any rate never produced such an impression of high color, of a redness really so vivid as to be feverish. Her heart was not at all in the gossip about Boulogne; and if her complexion was partly the result of the déjeûner and the petits verres, it was also the brave signal of what she was there to say. Maisie knew, when this did come, how anxiously it had been awaited by the youngest member of the party. "Her ladyship packed me off—she almost put me into the cab!" That was what Mrs. Wix at last brought out.

 XXIII

was stationed at the window; he didn't so much as turn round; and it was left to Maisie to take up the remark. "Do you mean you went to see her yesterday?"

"She came to see me; she knocked at my shabby door; she mounted my squalid stair. She told me she had seen you at Folkestone."

Maisie wondered. "She went back that evening?" 