Maisie glanced at the gentleman submissively, but
felt the want of more introduction. “The
Captain?”
Sir Claude broke into a laugh. “I told
her it was the Count.”
Ida stared; she rose so superior that she was colossal.
“You’re too utterly loathsome,”
she then declared. “Be off!” she repeated
to her daughter.
Maisie started, moved backward and, looking at Sir
Claude, “Only for a moment,” she signed
to him in her bewilderment. But he was too angry
to heed her—too angry with his wife; as
she turned away she heard his anger break out.
“You damned old b——“—she
couldn’t quite hear all. It was enough,
it was too much: she fled before it, rushing even
to a stranger for the shock of such a change of tone.
As she met the Captain’s light blue eyes the
greatest marvel occurred; she felt a sudden relief
at finding them reply with anxiety to the horror in
her face. “What in the world has he done?”
He put it all on Sir Claude.
“He has called her a damned old brute.”
She couldn’t help bringing that out.
The Captain, at the same elevation as her ladyship,
gaped wide; then of course, like every one else, he
was convulsed. But he instantly caught himself
up, echoing her bad words. “A damned old
brute—your mother?”
Maisie was already conscious of her second movement.
“I think she tried to make him angry.”
The Captain’s stupefaction was fine. “Angry—she?
Why she’s an angel!”
On the spot, as he said this, his face won her over;
it was so bright and kind, and his blue eyes had such
a reflexion of some mysterious grace that, for him
at least, her mother had put forth. Her fund of
observation enabled her as she gazed up at him to place
him: he was a candid simple soldier; very grave—she
came back to that—but not at all terrible.
At any rate he struck a note that was new to her and
that after a moment made her say: “Do you
like her very much?”
He smiled down at her, hesitating, looking pleasanter
and pleasanter. “Let me tell you about
your mother.”
He put out a big military hand which she immediately
took, and they turned off together to where a couple
of chairs had been placed under one of the trees.
“She told me to come to you,” Maisie explained
as they went; and presently she was close to him in
a chair, with the prettiest of pictures—the
sheen of the lake through other trees—before
them, and the sound of birds, the plash of boats,
the play of children in the air. The Captain,
inclining his military person, sat sideways to be closer
and kinder, and as her hand was on the arm of her seat
he put his own down on it again to emphasise something
he had to say that would be good for her to hear.
He had already told her how her mother, from the moment
of seeing her so unexpectedly with a person who was—well,
not at all the right person, had promptly asked him
