_ (Mrs.
Wix 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 at the hotel. It was perhaps half an effect
of her present renovations, as if her clothes had been somebody's else:
she had at any rate never produced such an impression of high colour,
of a redness associated in Maisie's mind at THAT pitch either with
measles or with "habits." Her heart was not at all in the gossip about
Boulogne; and if her complexion was partly the result of the dejeuner
and the _petits verres_ it was also the brave signal of what she was
there to say. Maisie knew when this did come how anxiously it had been
awaited by the youngest member of the party. "Her ladyship packed me
off--she almost put me into the cab!" That was what Mrs. Wix at last
brought out.

XXIII

Sir Claude was stationed at the window; he didn't so much as turn round,
and it was left to the youngest of the three to take up the remark. "Do
you mean you went to see her yesterday?"

"She came to see ME. She knocked at my shabby door. She mounted my
squalid stair. She told me she had seen you at Folkestone."

Maisie wondered. "She went back that evening?"

"No; yesterday morning. She drove to me straight from the station. It
was most remarkable. If I had a job to get off she did nothing to make
it worse--she did a great deal to make it better." Mrs. Wix hung fire,
though the flame in her face burned brighter; then she became capable
of saying: "Her ladyship's kind! She did what I didn't expect."

Maisie, on this, looked straight at her stepfather's back; it might well
have been for her at that hour a monument of her ladyship's kindness. It
remained, as such, monumentally still, and for a time that permitted the
child to ask of their companion: "Did she really help you?"

"Most practically." Again Mrs. Wix paused; again she quite resounded.
"She gave me a ten-pound note."

At that, still looking out, Sir Claude, at the window, laughed loud. "So
you see, Maisie, we've not quite lost it!"

"Oh no," Maisie responded. "Isn't that too charming?" She smiled at Mrs.
Wix. "We know al