Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/413

Rh at her from the centre of the room. The next thing she was sitting very high, wide awake with the fear of the hours of "abroad" that she might have lost. Mrs. Wix looked as if the day already made itself felt, and the process of catching up with it began for Maisie with hearing her distinctly say: "My poor dear, he has come!"

"Sir Claude?" Maisie, clearing the little bed- rug with the width of her spring, felt the polished floor under her bare feet.

"He crossed in the night; he got in early." Mrs. Wix's head jerked stiffly backward. "He's there."

"And you 've seen him?"

"No. He's there—he's there!" Mrs. Wix repeated. Her voice came out with a queer extinction that was not a voluntary drop, and she trembled so that it added to their common emotion. Visibly pale, they gazed at each other.

"Isn't it too beautiful!" Maisie panted back at her; an appeal to which, however, she was not ready with a response. The term Maisie had used was a flash of diplomacy—to prevent, at any rate, Mrs. Wix's using another. To that degree it was successful; there was only an appeal, strange