I don't!" she thundered from the threshold, advancing upon the opposed three, but addressing herself directly to Maisie. She was girded, positively harnessed, for departure—arrayed as she had been arrayed on her advent and armed with a small, fat, rusty reticule which, almost in the manner of a battle-axe, she brandished in support of her words. She had clearly come straight from her room, where Maisie in an instant guessed she had directed the removal of her minor effects. "I don't leave you till I've given you another chance. Will you come with me?"
Maisie turned to Sir Claude, who struck her as having been removed to a distance of about a mile. To Mrs. Beale she turned no more than Mrs. Beale had turned: she felt as if already their difference had been disclosed. What had come out about that in the scene between the two women? Enough came out now, at all events, as she put it practically to her stepfather. "Will you come? Won't you?" she inquired as if she had not already seen that she should have to give him up. It was the last flare of her dream; by this time she was afraid of nothing.
