Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/444

430 the things before him a little way and had his elbows on the table. This time she was convinced she knew what was coming, and once more, for the crash, as with Mrs. Wix lately in their room, she held her breath and drew together her eyes. He was going to say that she must give him up. He looked hard at her again; then he made his effort. "Should you see your way to let her go?"

She was bewildered. "To let who—?"

"Mrs. Wix, simply. I put it at the worst. Should you see your way to sacrifice her? Of course I know what I 'm asking."

Maisie's eyes opened wide again; this was so different from what she had expected. "And stay with you alone?"

He gave another push to his coffee-cup. "With me and Mrs. Beale. Of course it would be rather rum; but everything in our whole story is rather rum, you know. What is more unusual than for any one to be given up, like you, by her parents?"

"Oh, nothing is more unusual than that!" Maisie concurred, relieved at the contact of a proposition as to which concurrence could have lucidity.

"Of course it would be quite unconventional," Sir Claude went on—"I mean the