rent." Their eyes, at
this, met again in a long and extraordinary communion which terminated
in his ejaculating: "Ah you little scoundrel!" She took it from him in
the manner it seemed to her he would like best and with a success that
encouraged him to go on: "You ARE a deep little devil!" Her silence,
ticking like a watch, acknowledged even this, in confirmation of which
he finally brought out: "You've settled it with the other pair!"

"Well, what if I have?" She sounded to herself most bold.

Her father, quite as in the old days, broke into a peal. "Why, don't you
know they're awful?"

She grew bolder still. "I don't care--not a bit!"

"But they're probably the worst people in the world and the very
greatest criminals," Beale pleasantly urged. "I'm not the man, my dear,
not to let you know it."

"Well, it doesn't prevent them from loving me. They love me
tremendously." Maisie turned crimson to hear herself.

Her companion fumbled; almost any one--let alone a daughter--would
have seen how conscientious he wanted to be. "I dare say. But do you
know why?" She braved his eyes and he added: "You're a jolly good
pretext."

"For what?" Maisie asked.

"Why, for their game. I needn't tell you what that is."

The child reflected. "Well then that's all the more reason."

"Reason for what, pray?"

"For their being kind to me."

"And for your keeping in with them?" Beale roared again; it was as if
his spirits rose and rose. "Do you realise, pray, that in saying that
you're a monster?"

She turned it over. "A monster?"

"They've MADE one of you. Upon my honour it's quite awful. It shows
the kind of people they are. Don't you understand," Beale pursued,
"that when they've made you as horrid as they can--as horrid as
themselves--they'll just simply chuck you?"

She had at this a flicker of passion. "They WON'T chuck me!"

"I beg your pardon," her father courteously insisted; "it's my duty to
put it before you. I shouldn't forgive myself if I didn't point out to
you that they'll cease to require you." He spoke as if with an appeal to
her intelligence that she must be ashamed not adequately to meet, and
this gave a real distinction to his superior delicacy.

It cleared the case as he had wished. "Cease to require me because they
won't care?" She paused with that sketch of her idea.

"OF COURSE Sir Claude won't care if his wife bolts. That's his game. It
will suit him down to the ground."

This was a proposition