Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/335

Rh way their companion's challenge made him turn it round and round. She had seen people do that who, she was sure, did nothing else that Sir Claude did. "I can't just say, my dear thing. We'll see about it—we 'll talk of it to-morrow. Meantime I must get some air."

Mrs. Wix, with her back to the window, threw up her head to a height that still, for a moment, had the effect of detaining him. "All the air in France, Sir Claude, won't, I think, give you the courage to deny that you 're simply afraid of her!"

Oh, this time he did look queer; Maisie had no need of Susan's vocabulary to note it! It would have come to her of itself as, with his hand on the door, he turned his eyes from his stepdaughter to her governess and then back again. Resting on Maisie's, though for ever so short a time, there was something they gave up to her and tried to explain. His lips, however, explained nothing; they only completed his collapse. "Yes. I'm simply afraid of her!" He opened the door and passed out.

It brought back to Maisie his confession of fear of her mother; it made her stepmother then the second lady about whom he