Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/424

410 "I won't! I won't go near them!" cried Mrs. Wix.

"Then I'll see him alone." The child spied what she had been looking for—she possessed herself of her hat. "Perhaps I 'll take him out!" And, with decision, she quitted the room.

When she entered the salon it was empty; but at the sound of the opened door some one stirred on the balcony and Sir Claude, stepping straight in, stood before her. He was in light, fresh clothes and wore a straw hat with a bright ribbon; these things, besides striking her in themselves as the very promise of the grandest of grand tours, gave him a certain radiance and, as it were, a tropical ease; but such an effect only marked rather more his having stopped short and, for a longer minute than had ever, at such a juncture, elapsed, not opened his arms to her. His pause made her pause and enabled her to reflect that he must have been up some time, for there were no traces of breakfast, and that, though it was so late, he had rather markedly not caused her to be called to him. Had Mrs. Wix been right about their forfeiture of the salon? Was it all his now, all his and Mrs. Beale's? Such an