Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/468

454 Sir Claude looked at his watch. "I had no idea it was so late, nor that we had been out so long. We were n't hungry. It passed like a flash. What has come up?"

"Oh, that she's disgusted," said Mrs. Beale.

"Disgusted? With whom?"

"With Maisie." Even now she never looked at the child, who stood there equally associated and disconnected. "For having no moral sense."

"How should she have?" Sir Claude tried again to shine a little at the companion of his walk. "How, at any rate, is it proved by her going out with me?"

"Don't ask me; ask that woman. She drivels when she doesn't rage," Mrs. Beale, declared.

"And she leaves the child?"

"She leaves the child," said Mrs. Beale with great emphasis, looking more than ever over Maisie' s head.

In this position suddenly a change came into her face, caused, as the others could, the next thing, see, by the reappearance of Mrs. Wix in the doorway which, on coming in at Sir Claude's heels, Maisie had left gaping. "I don't leave the child—I don't,