Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/88

74 well by her mother, but had come to see her now so that he might know her really. She could see that his view of the way "really" to know her was to make her come away with him, and, further, that this was what he was there for, and had already been some time, arranging it with Mrs. Beale, and getting on with that lady in a manner evidently not at all affected by her having, on the arrival of his portrait, thought of him so ill. They had grown almost intimate—or had the air of it—over their discussion; and it was still further conveyed to Maisie that Mrs. Beale had made no secret, and would make yet less of one, of all that it cost to let her go. "You seem so tremendously eager," she said to the child, "that I hope you 're at least clear about Sir Claude's relation to you. It doesn't appear to occur to him to give you the necessary reassurance."

Maisie, a trifle mystified, turned quickly to her new friend. "Why, it 's of course that you 're married to her, isn't it?"

Her anxious emphasis started them off, as she had learned to call it; this was the echo she infallibly and now quite resignedly produced. Moreover Sir Claude's laughter was an indistinguishable part of the sweetness of