her as the way that at balls, by delightful partners, young
ladies must be spoken to in the intervals of dances; and she tried to
think of something that would meet it at the same high point. But this
effort flurried her, and all she could produce was: "At first, you know,
I thought you were Lord Eric."

The Captain looked vague. "Lord Eric?"

"And then Sir Claude thought you were the Count."

At this he laughed out. "Why he's only five foot high and as red as
a lobster!" Maisie laughed, with a certain elegance, in return--the
young lady at the ball certainly would--and was on the point, as
conscientiously, of pursuing the subject with an agreeable question. But
before she could speak her companion challenged her. "Who in the world's
Lord Eric?"

"Don't you know him?" She judged her young lady would say that with
light surprise.

"Do you mean a fat man with his mouth always open?" She had to
confess that their acquaintance was so limited that she could only
describe the bearer of the name as a friend of mamma's; but a light
suddenly came to the Captain, who quickly spoke as knowing her man.
"What-do-you-call-him's brother, the fellow that owned Bobolink?" Then,
with all his kindness, he contradicted her flat. "Oh dear no; your
mother never knew HIM."

"But Mrs. Wix said so," the child risked.

"Mrs. Wix?"

"My old governess."

This again seemed amusing to the Captain. "She mixed him up, your old
governess. He's an awful beast. Your mother never looked at him."

He was as positive as he was friendly, but he dropped for a minute after
this into a silence that gave Maisie, confused but ingenious, a chance
to redeem the mistake of pretending to know too much by the humility of
inviting further correction. "And doesn't she know the Count?"

"Oh I dare say! But he's another ass." After which abruptly, with a
different look, he put down again on the back of her own the hand he had
momentarily removed. Maisie even thought he coloured a little. "I want
tremendously to speak to you. You must never believe any harm of your
mother."

"Oh I assure you I DON'T!" cried the child, blushing, herself, up to her
eyes in a sudden surge of deprecation of such a thought.

The Captain, bending his head, raised her hand to his lips with a
benevolence that made her wish her glove had been nicer. "Of course you
don't when you know how fond she is of YOU."

"She's fond of me?" Maisie panted.

"Tremendously. But she thinks you