Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/215

Sir Claude, smoking rather hard, made no immediate rejoinder; but finally he exclaimed: "Then, my dear, you were the perfection of an idiot!" He was so irritated—or she took him to be—that for the rest of the time they were in the Gardens he spoke no other word; and she meanwhile subtly abstained from any attempt to pacify him. That would only lead to more questions. At the gate of the Gardens he hailed a four-wheeled cab and without meeting her conscious eyes put her into it, only saying "Give him that!" as he tossed half a crown upon the seat. Even when from outside he had closed the door and told the man where to go he never took her departing look. Nothing of this kind had ever yet happened to them, but it had no power to make her love him less, and she could not only bear it—she felt as she drove away that she could rejoice in it. It brought again the sweet sense of success that, ages before, she had had on an occasion when, on the stairs, returning from her father's, she had met a fierce question of her mother's with an imbecility as studied and had in consequence been dashed by Mrs. Farange almost to the bottom.