ld, glaring at
her as at an equal plotter of sin. Maisie received in petrifaction the
full force of her mother's huge painted eyes--they were like Japanese
lanterns swung under festal arches. But life came back to her from a
tone suddenly and strangely softened. "Go straight to that gentleman, my
dear; I've asked him to take you a few minutes. He's charming--go. I've
something to say to THIS creature."

Maisie felt Sir Claude immediately clutch her. "No, no--thank you: that
won't do. She's mine."

"Yours?" It was confounding to Maisie to hear her speak quite as if she
had never heard of Sir Claude before.

"Mine. You've given her up. You've not another word to say about her. I
have her from her father," said Sir Claude--a statement that startled
his companion, who could also measure its lively action on her mother.

There was visibly, however, an influence that made Ida consider; she
glanced at the gentleman she had left, who, having strolled with his
hands in his pockets to some distance, stood there with unembarrassed
vagueness. She directed to him the face that was like an illuminated
garden, turnstile and all, for the frequentation of which he had his
season-ticket; then she looked again at Sir Claude. "I've given her
up to her father to KEEP--not to get rid of by sending about the town
either with you or with any one else. If she's not to mind me let HIM
come and tell me so. I decline to take it from another person, and I
like your pretending that with your humbug of 'interest' you've a leg to
stand on. I know your game and have something now to say to you about
it."

Sir Claude gave a squeeze of the child's arm. "Didn't I tell you she'd
have, Miss Farange?"

"You're uncommonly afraid to hear it," Ida went on; "but if you think
she'll protect you from it you're mightily mistaken." She gave him a
moment. "I'll give her the benefit as soon as look at you. Should you
like her to know, my dear?" Maisie had a sense of her launching the
question with effect; yet our young lady was also conscious of hoping
that Sir Claude would declare that preference. We have already learned
that she had come to like people's liking her to "know." Before he
could reply at all, none the less, her mother opened a pair of arms of
extraordinary elegance, and then she felt the loosening of his grasp.
"My own child," Ida murmured in a voice--a voice of sudden confused
tenderness--that it seemed to her she heard for the first time. She