Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/475

Rh that placed her again in the centre of the room, the cynosure of every eye and not knowing which way to turn.

She turned with an effort to Mrs. Wix. "I did n't refuse to give you up. I said I would if he 'd give up."

"Give up Mrs. Beale?" burst from Mrs. Wix.

"Give up Mrs. Beale. What do you call that but exquisite?" Sir Claude demanded of all of them, the lady mentioned included; speaking with a relish as intense now as if some lovely work of art or of nature had suddenly been set down among them. He was rapidly recovering himself on this basis of fine appreciation. "She made her condition—with such a sense of what it should be! She made the only right one."

"The only right one?"—Mrs. Beale returned to the charge. She had taken, a moment before, a check from him, but she was not to be checked on this. "How can you talk such rubbish, and how can you back her up in such impertinence? What in the world have you done to her to make her think of such stuff?" She stood there in righteous wrath; she flashed her eyes round the circle. Maisie took them full in her own,