as one, and also, a moment later, as she hung round his neck, that
even such a personage would scarce commit herself more grandly. There
was moreover a hint of the duchess in the infinite point with which,
as she felt, she exclaimed: "And this is what you call coming OFTEN?"

Sir Claude met her delightfully and in the same fine spirit. "My dear
old man, don't make me a scene--I assure you it's what every woman I
look at does. Let us have some fun--it's a lovely day: clap on something
smart and come out with me; then we'll talk it over quietly."

They were on their way five minutes later to Hyde Park, and nothing that
even in the good days at her mother's they had ever talked over had more
of the sweetness of tranquillity than his present prompt explanations.
He was at his best in such an office and with the exception of Mrs. Wix
the only person she had met in her life who ever explained. With him,
however, the act had an authority transcending the wisdom of woman. It
all came back--the plans that always failed, all the rewards and bribes
that she was perpetually paying for in advance and perpetually out of
pocket by afterwards--the whole great stress to be dealt with introduced
her on each occasion afresh to the question of money. Even she herself
almost knew how it would have expressed the strength of his empire to
say that to shuffle away her sense of being duped he had only, from
under his lovely moustache, to breathe upon it. It was somehow in the
nature of plans to be expensive and in the nature of the expensive to be
impossible. To be "involved" was of the essence of everybody's affairs,
and also at every particular moment to be more involved than usual.
This had been the case with Sir Claude's, with papa's, with mamma's,
with Mrs. Beale's and with Maisie's own at the particular moment, a
moment of several weeks, that had elapsed since our young lady had been
re-established at her father's. There wasn't "two-and-tuppence" for