Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/328

314 Mrs. Wix gave her a look that, at any rate, deprecated the wrong tone. "It was not her maid."

"Do you mean there are, this time, two?" Sir Claude asked as if he had not heard.

"Two maids?" Maisie went on as if she might assume he had.

The reproach of the straighteners darkened; but Sir Claude cut across it with a sudden "See here—what do you mean? And what do you suppose she meant?"

Mrs. Wix let him for a moment in silence understand that the answer to his question, if he didn't take care, might give him more than he wanted. It was as if, with this scruple, she measured and adjusted all that she gave him in at last saying: "What she meant was to make me know that you 're definitely free. To have that straight from her was a joy I, of course, had n't hoped for: it made the assurance, and my delight at it, a thing I really proceed upon. You already know I would have started even if she had n't pressed me; you already know what, so long, we have been looking for and what, as soon as she told me of her step taken at Folkestone, I recognized with rapture that we have. It 's your freedom that makes me