Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/372

358 in the white and gold salon. It was flanked moreover with a couple of liqueurs, and Maisie felt that Sir Claude could scarce have been taken more at his word had it been followed by anecdotes and cigarettes. The influence of these luxuries was at any rate in the air; it seemed to her, while she tiptoed at the chimney-glass, pulling on her gloves and, with a motion of her head, shaking a feather into place, to have had something to do with Mrs. Wix's suddenly saying: "Haven't you really and truly any moral sense?"

Maisie was aware that her answer, though it brought her down to her heels, was vague even to imbecility and that this was the first time she had appeared to practise with Mrs. Wix an intellectual inaptitude to meet her—the infirmity to which she had owed so much success with papa and mamma. The appearance did her injustice, for it was not less through her candor than through her playfellow's pressure that, after this, the idea of a moral sense mainly colored their intercourse. She began, the poor child, with scarcely knowing what it was; but it proved something that, with scarce an outward sign save her surrender to the swing