Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/265

loud words had arisen between the others, brought to her lips with the tremor preceding disaster: "Can't I, please, be sent home in a cab?" Yes, the Countess wanted her and the Countess was wounded and chilled, and she could n't help it, and it was all the more dreadful because it only made the Countess more seductive and more impossible. The only thing that sustained either of them perhaps till the cab came—Maisie presently saw it would come—was its being in the air somehow that Beale had done what he wanted. He went out to look for a conveyance; the servants, he said, had gone to bed, but she should n't be kept beyond her time. The Countess left the room with him and alone in possession of it Maisie hoped she would n't come back. It was all the effect of her face—the child simply couldn't look at it and meet its expression half-way. All in a moment too that queer expression had leaped into the lovely things—all in a moment she had had to accept her father as liking some one whom, she was sure, neither her mother, nor Mrs. Beale, nor Mrs. Wix, nor Sir Claude, nor the Captain, nor even Mr. Perriam nor Lord Eric, could possibly have liked. Three minutes later, down-