ised his eyebrows and his arms to play at
admiration; he was evidently after all disposed to be gay. "Got you
up?--I should think so! She has dressed you most beautifully. Isn't she
coming?"

Maisie wondered if she had better tell. "She said not."

"Doesn't she want to see a poor devil?"

She looked about under the vibration of the way he described himself,
and her eyes rested on the door of the room he had previously occupied.
"Is Mrs. Beale in there?"

Sir Claude looked blankly at the same object. "I haven't the least
idea!"

"You haven't seen her?"

"Not the tip of her nose."

Maisie thought: there settled on her, in the light of his beautiful
smiling eyes, the faintest purest coldest conviction that he wasn't
telling the truth. "She hasn't welcomed you?"

"Not by a single sign."

"Then where is she?"

Sir Claude laughed; he seemed both amused and surprised at the point
she made of it. "I give it up!"

"Doesn't she know you've come?"

He laughed again. "Perhaps she doesn't care!"

Maisie, with an inspiration, pounced on his arm. "Has she GONE?"

He met her eyes and then she could see that his own were really much
graver than his manner. "Gone?" She had flown to the door, but before
she could raise her hand to knock he was beside her and had caught it.
"Let her be. I don't care about her. I want to see YOU."

"Then she HASN'T gone?"

Maisie fell back with him. He still looked as if it were a joke, but the
more she saw of him the more she could make out that he was troubled.
"It wouldn't be like her!"

She stood wondering at him. "Did you want her to come?"

"How can you suppose--?" He put it to her candidly. "We had an immense
row over it."

"Do you mean you've quarrelled?"

Sir Claude was at a loss. "What has she told you?"

"That I'm hers as much as yours. That she represents papa."

His gaze struck away through the open window and up to the sky; she
could hear him rattle in his trousers-pockets his money or his keys.
"Yes--that's what she keeps saying." It gave him for a moment an air
that was almost helpless.

"You say you don't care about her," Maisie went on. "DO you mean you've
quarrelled?"

"We do nothing in life but quarrel."

He rose before her, as he said this, so soft and fair, so rich, in spite
of what might worry him, in restored familiarities, that it gave a
bright blur to the meaning--to what would otherwise perhaps have been
the palpable promise--of the words.

"Oh