Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/398

384 them, presently broken, however, by one of Maisie's sudden reversions. "Mercy, isn't she handsome?"

Mrs. Wix had finished; she waited. "She'll attract attention." They were rapid, and it would have been noticed that the shock the beauty had given them acted, incongruously, as a positive spur to their preparations for rejoining her. She had, none the less, when they returned to the sitting-room, already descended; the open door of her room showed it empty, and the chambermaid explained. Here again they were delayed by another sharp thought of Mrs. Wix's. "But what will she live on meanwhile?"

Maisie stopped short. "Till Sir Claude comes?"

It was nothing to the violence with which her friend had been arrested. "Who 'll pay the bills?"

Maisie thought. "Can't she?"

"She? She has n't a penny."

The child wondered. "But did n't papa?"

"Leave her a fortune?" Mrs. Wix would have appeared to speak of papa as dead had she not immediately added: "Why, he lives on other women!"