ined, in that relation, from an early age, to keep an eye on manual
motions, and its possible bearing was not darkened by the memory of the
handful of gold that Susan Ash would never, never believe Mrs. Beale had
sent back--"not she; she's too false and too greedy!"--to the munificent
Countess. To have guessed, none the less, that her ladyship's purse
might be the real figure of the object extracted from the rustling
covert at her rear--this suspicion gave on the spot to the child's eyes
a direction carefully distant. It added moreover to the optimism that
for an hour could ruffle the surface of her deep diplomacy, ruffle it
to the point of making her forget that she had never been safe unless
she had also been stupid. She in short forgot her habitual caution in
her impulse to adopt her ladyship's practical interests and show her
ladyship how perfectly she understood them. She saw without looking
that her mother pressed a little clasp; heard, without wanting to,
the sharp click that marked the closing portemonnaie from which
something had been taken. What this was she just didn't see; it was not
too substantial to be locked with ease in the fold of her ladyship's
fingers. Nothing was less new to Maisie than the art of not thinking
singly, so that at this instant she could both bring out what was on
her tongue's end and weigh, as to the object in her mother's palm, the
question of its being a sovereign against the question of its being a
shilling. No sooner had she begun to speak than she saw that within a
few seconds this question would have been settled: she had foolishly
checked the rising words of the little speech of presentation to which,
under the circumstances, even such a high pride as Ida's had had to give
some thought. She had checked it completely--that was the next thing she
felt: the note she sounded brought into her companion's eyes a look that
quickly enough seemed at variance with presentations.

"That was what the Captain said to me that day, mamma. I think it would
have given you pleasure to hear the way he spoke of you."

The pleasure, Maisie could now in consternation reflect, would have been
a long time coming if it had come no faster than the response evoked by
her allusion to it. Her mother gave her one of the looks that slammed
the door in her face; never in a career of unsuccessful experiments had
Maisie had to take such a stare. It reminded her of the way that once,
at one of the lectures in Gl