to that new place."

"What new place?" Sir Claude enquired.

Ida thought, but couldn't recall it. "Oh 'Chose,' don't you know?
--where every one goes. I want some proper treatment. It's all I've ever
asked for on earth. But that's not what I came to say."

Sir Claude, in silence, folded one by one his newspapers; then he rose
and stood whacking the palm of his hand with the bundle. "You'll stop
and dine with us?"

"Dear no--I can't dine at this sort of hour. I ordered dinner at Dover."

Her ladyship's tone in this one instance showed a certain superiority to
those conditions in which her daughter had artlessly found Folkestone a
paradise. It was yet not so crushing as to nip in the bud the eagerness
with which the latter broke out: "But won't you at least have a cup of
tea?"

Ida kissed her again on the brow. "Thanks, love. I had tea before
coming." She raised her eyes to Sir Claude. "She IS sweet!" He made no
more answer than if he didn't agree; but Maisie was at ease about that
and was still taken up with the joy of this happier pitch of their talk,
which put more and more of a meaning into the Captain's version of her
ladyship and literally kindled a conjecture that such an admirer might,
over there at the other place, be waiting for her to dine. Was the same
conjecture in Sir Claude's mind? He partly puzzled her, if it had risen
there, by the slight perversity with which he returned to a question
that his wife evidently thought she had disposed of.

He whacked his hand again with his paper. "I had really much better take
you."

"And leave Maisie here alone?"

Mamma so clearly didn't want it that Maisie leaped at the vision of a
Captain who had seen her on from Dover and who, while he waited to take
her back, would be hovering just at the same distance at which, in
Kensington Gardens, the companion of his walk had herself hovered. Of
course, however, instead of breathing any such guess she let Sir Claude
reply; all the more that his reply could contribute so much to her own
present grandeur. "She won't be alone when she has a maid in
attendance."

Maisie had never before had so much of a retinue, and she waited also to
enjoy the action of it on her ladyship. "You mean the woman you brought
from town?" Ida considered. "The person at the house spoke of her in a
way that scarcely made her out company for my child." Her tone was that
her child had never wanted, in her hands, for prodigious company. But
she a