Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/415

Rh of silent insistence, in hand; she reduced the process to sequences more definite than any it had known since the days of Moddle. Whatever it might be that was now, with a difference, attached to Sir Claude's presence, was still, after all, compatible for our young lady with the instinct of dressing to see him with almost untidy haste. Mrs. Wix meanwhile, luckily, was not wholly directed to repression. "He 's there—he 's there!" she had said over several times. It was her answer to every invitation to mention how long she had been up and her motive for respecting so rigidly the slumber of her companion. It formed for some minutes her only account of the whereabouts of the others and her reason for not having yet seen them, as well as of the possibility of their presently being found in the salon.

"He 's there—he 's there!" she declared once more, as she made, on the child, with an almost invidious tug, a strained undergarment "meet."

"Do you mean he 's in the salon?" Maisie asked again.

"He's with her," Mrs. Wix desolately said. "He 's with her," she reiterated.