Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/462

448 much as she, Sir Claude who would n't move. It was Sir Claude who cultivated the supreme stillness by which she knew best what he meant. He simply meant that he knew all she herself meant. But there was no pretence of pleasantry now; their faces were grave and tired. When at last they lounged off it was as if his fear, his fear of his weakness, leaned upon her hard while they followed the harbor. In the hall of the hotel, as they passed in, she saw a battered old box that she recognized, an ancient receptacle with dangling labels that she knew and a big painted W, lately done over and intensely personal, that seemed to stare at her with a recognition and even with some suspicion of its own. Sir Claude caught it too, and there was agitation for both of them in the sight of this object on the move. Was Mrs. Wix going, and was the responsibility of giving her up lifted, at a touch, from her pupil? Her pupil and her pupil's companion, transfixed a moment, held, in the presence of the omen, communication more intense than in the presence either of the Paris train or of the Channel steamer; then, and still without a word, they went straight upstairs. There, however, on the