Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/62

48 as to torment Mr. Farange. What at last, however, in this connection, was bewildering and a little frightening was the dawn of a suspicion that a better way had been found to torment Mr. Farange than to deprive him of his periodical burden. This was the question that worried our young lady and that Miss Overmore's confidences and the frequent observations of her employer only rendered more mystifying. It was a contradiction that if Ida had now a fancy for shirking the devotion she had originally been so hot about her late husband should n't jump at the monopoly for which he had also in the first instance so fiercely fought; but when Maisie, with a subtlety beyond her years, sounded this new ground her main success was in hearing her mother more freshly abused. Miss Overmore, up to now, had rarely deviated from a decent reserve; but the day came when she expressed herself with a vividness not inferior to Beale's own on the subject of the lady who had fled to the continent to wriggle out of her job. It would serve this lady right, Maisie gathered, if that contract, in the shape of an overgrown and underdressed daughter, should be shipped straight out to her and landed