Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/263

won't you have it?" She had felt then, for some reason, a small, silly terror, though afterwards conscious that her interlocutress, unfortunately hideous, had particularly meant to be kind. This was also what the Countess meant; yet the few words she had uttered and the smile with which she had uttered them immediately cleared everything up. Oh, no, she wanted to go nowhere with her, for her presence had already, in a few seconds, dissipated the happy impression of the room and put an end to the pride momentarily suggested by Beale's association with so much taste. There was no taste in his association with the short, fat, wheedling, whiskered person who had approached her and in whom she had to recognize the only figure wholly without attraction that had become a party to an intimate connection formed in her immediate circle. She was abashed meanwhile, however, at having appeared to weigh the place to which she had been invited; and she added as quickly as possible: "It isn't to America, then—?" The Countess, at this, looked sharply at Beale, and Beale, airily enough, asked what the deuce it mattered when she had already given him to understand that she wanted to