Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/460

446 start; then the man went his way with a shrug. "It 's gone!" Sir Claude said.

Maisie crept some distance up the platform; she stood there with her back to her companion, following it with her eyes, keeping down tears, nursing her pink and yellow books. She had had a real fright, but had fallen back to earth. The odd thing was that in her fall her fear too had been dashed down and broken. It was gone. She looked round at last, from where she had paused, at Sir Claude's, and then she saw that his was not. It sat there with him on the bench to which, against the wall of the station, he had retreated and where, leaning back and, as she thought, very queer, he still waited. She came down to him, and he continued to offer his ineffectual intention of pleasantry. "Yes, I 've chosen," she said to him. "I 'll let her go if you—if you—"

She faltered; he quickly took her up. "If I, if I—?"

"If you 'll give up Mrs. Beale."

"Oh!" he exclaimed; on which she saw how much, how hopelessly he was afraid. She had supposed at the café that it was of his rebellion, of his gathering motive; but how could that be when his temptations—