Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/321

little white and gold salon which Maisie thought the loveliest place she had ever seen except perhaps the apartment of the Countess; it came while the hard summer storm lashed the windows and blew in such a chill that Sir Claude, with his hands in his pockets and a cigarette in his teeth, fidgeting, frowning, looking out and turning back, ended by causing a smoky little fire to be made in the dressy little chimney. It came in spite of something that could only be named his air of wishing to put it off; an air that had served him—oh, as all his airs served him!—to the extent of his having for a couple of hours confined the conversation to gratuitous jokes and generalities, kept it on the level of the little empty coffee-cups and petits verres (Mrs. Wix had had two of each!) that struck Maisie, through the fumes of the French fire and the English tobacco, as a token, more than ever, that they were launched. She felt now, in close quarters and as clearly as if Mrs. Wix had told her, that what this lady had come over for was not merely to be chaffed and to hear her pupil chaffed—not even to hear Sir Claude, who knew French in perfection, imitate the strange sounds emitted by the English folk