Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/473

Rh lingered there his face bent itself with extraordinary gentleness on both the friends he was about to lose. "Do you know what I came back for?" he asked of the elder.

"I think I do!" cried Mrs. Wix, surprisingly unmollified and with a crimson on her brow that was like a wave of color reflected from the luridness lately enacted with Mrs. Beale. That lady, as if a little besprinkled by such turns of the tide, uttered a loud, inarticulate protest and, averting herself, stood a moment at the window.

"I came back with a proposal," said Sir Claude.

"To me?" Mrs. Wix asked.

"To Maisie. That she should give you up."

"And does she?"

Sir Claude wavered. "Tell her!" he then exclaimed to the child, also turning away as if to give her the chance. But Mrs. Wix and her pupil stood confronted in silence, Maisie whiter than ever—more awkward, more rigid and yet more dumb. They looked at each other hard, and as nothing came from them Sir Claude faced about again. "You won't tell her?—you can't?" Still she said nothing; whereupon,