Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/329

Rh right"—she fairly bristled with her logic. "But I don't mind telling you that it 's her action that makes me happy!"

"Her action?" Sir Claude echoed. "Why, my dear woman, her action is just a heinous crime. It happens to satisfy our sympathies in a way that's quite delicious; but that doesn't in the least alter the fact that it 's the most abominable thing ever done. She has chucked our friend here overboard not a bit less than if she had shoved her, shrieking and pleading, out of that window and down two floors upon the paving-stones."

Maisie surveyed serenely the parties to the discussion. "Oh, your friend here, dear Sir Claude, doesn't plead and shriek!"

He looked at her a moment. "Never. Never. That's one—only one, but charming so far as it goes—of about a hundred things we love her for." Then he pursued to Mrs. Wix: "What I can't for the life of me make out is what Ida is really up to, what game she was playing in turning to you with that cursed cheek after the beastly way she has used you. Where—to explain her at all—does she fancy she can presently, when we least expect it, take it out of us?"