She began, the
poor child, with scarcely knowing what it was; but it proved something
that, with scarce an outward sign save her surrender to the swing of the
carriage, she could, before they came back from their drive, strike up a
sort of acquaintance with. The beauty of the day only deepened, and the
splendour of the afternoon sea, and the haze of the far headlands, and
the taste of the sweet air. It was the coachman indeed who, smiling and
cracking his whip, turning in his place, pointing to invisible objects
and uttering unintelligible sounds--all, our tourists recognised, strict
features of a social order principally devoted to language: it was this
polite person, I say, who made their excursion fall so much short that
their return left them still a stretch of the long daylight and an hour
that, at his obliging suggestion, they spent on foot by the shining
sands. Maisie had seen the _plage_ the day before with Sir Claude, but
that was a reason the more for showing on the spot to Mrs. Wix that it
was, as she said, another of the places on her list and of the things of
which she knew the French name. The bathers, so late, were absent and
the tide was low; the sea-pools twinkled in the sunset and there were
dry places as well, where they could sit again and admire and expatiate:
a circumstance that, while they listened to the lap of the waves, gave
Mrs. Wix a fresh support for her challenge. "Have you absolutely none at
all?"
She had no need now, as to the question itself at least, to be specific;
that on the other hand was the eventual result of their quiet conjoined
apprehension of the thing that--well, yes, since they must face
it--Maisie absolutely and appallingly had so little of.
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