Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/344

330 was to abide with his stepdaughter as the very image of stupefaction; but the pair lacked time to communicate either amusement or alarm before their interlocutress was upon them again. She had begun in fact to show infinite variety, and she flashed about with a still quicker change of tone. "Have you brought me that thing as a pretext for going over?"

Sir Claude braced himself. "I can't, after such news, in common decency not. I mean—don't you know?—in common courtesy and humanity. My dear lady, you can't chuck a woman that way, especially taking the moment when she has been most insulted and wronged. A fellow must behave like a gentleman, damn it, dear good Mrs. Wix. We did n't come away, we two, to hang right on, you know: it was only to try our paces and just put in a few days that might prove to every one concerned that we're in earnest. It 's exactly because we 're in earnest that, hang it, we need n't be so awfully particular. I mean—don't you know?—we need n't be so awfully afraid." He showed a vivacity, an intensity of argument, and if Maisie counted his words she was all the more ready to swallow, after a single swift gasp, those that, the