In coming here it's of course for your
mother I'm acting."
"Oh I know," Maisie said with all the candour of her competence. "She
can't come herself--except just to the door." Then as she thought
afresh: "Can't she come even to the door now?"
"There you are!" Mrs. Beale exclaimed to Sir Claude. She spoke as if his
dilemma were ludicrous.
His kind face, in a hesitation, seemed to recognise it; but he answered
the child with a frank smile. "No--not very well."
"Because she has married you?"
He promptly accepted this reason. "Well, that has a good deal to do with
it."
He was so delightful to talk to that Maisie pursued the subject. "But
papa--HE has married Miss Overmore."
"Ah you'll see that he won't come for you at your mother's," that lady
interposed.
"Yes, but that won't be for a long time," Maisie hastened to respond.
"We won't talk about it now--you've months and months to put in first."
And Sir Claude drew her closer.
"Oh that's what makes it so hard to give her up!" Mrs. Beale made this
point with her arms out to her stepdaughter. Maisie, quitting Sir
Claude, went over to them and, clasped in a still tenderer embrace, felt
entrancingly the extension of the field of happiness. "I'LL come for
you," said her stepmother, "if Sir Claude keeps you too long: we must
make him quite understand that! Don't talk to me about her ladyship!"
she went on to their visitor so familiarly that it was almost as if they
must have met before.
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