Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/456

442 him more than ever a gentleman. It was true that once or twice, on the jetty, on the sands, he looked at her for an instant with eyes that seemed to propose to her to come straight off with him to Paris. That, however, was not to give her a nudge about her responsibility. He evidently wanted to procrastinate quite as much as she—he was not a bit more in a hurry to get back to the others. Maisie herself, at this moment, could be secretly merciless to Mrs. Wix—to the extent at any rate of not caring if her continued disappearance did make that lady begin to worry about what had become of her, even begin to wonder perhaps if the truants had n't found their remedy. Her want of mercy to Mrs. Beale, indeed, was at least as great; for Mrs. Beale' s worry and wonder would be as much greater as the object to which they were directed. When at last Sir Claude, at the far end of the plage, which they had already, in the many-colored crowd, once traversed, suddenly, with a look at his watch, remarked that it was time, not to get back to the table d'hôte, but to get over to the station and meet the Paris papers—when he did this she found herself thinking, quite with intensity, what Mrs. Beale