Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/319

with Susan Ash, who positively crowed over the bad weather, partly, it seemed, for relish of the time their visitor would have in the boat, and partly to point the moral of the folly of coming to such holes. In the wet, with Sir Claude, Maisie went to the Folkestone packet, on the arrival of which, with many signs of the fray, he made her wait under an umbrella on the quay; whence, almost before the vessel touched, he was to be descried, in quest of their friend, wriggling—that had been his word—through the invalids massed upon the deck. It was long till he reappeared—it was not indeed till every one had landed; when he presented the object of his benevolence in a light that Maisie scarce knew whether to hold the depth of prostration or the climax of success. The lady on his arm, still bent beneath her late ordeal, was muffled in such draperies as had never contributed so much support to so much misery. At the hotel, an hour later, this ambiguity dropped: assisting Mrs. Wix in private to refresh and reinvest herself, Maisie heard from her in detail how little she could have achieved if Sir Claude hadn't put it in her power. It was a phrase that, in her room, she repeated in connec-