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 don't like her. You MUST like her. She
has had too much to put up with."

"Oh yes--I know!" She rejoiced that she had never denied it.

"Of course I've no right to speak of her except as a particular friend,"
the Captain went on. "But she's a splendid woman. She has never had any
sort of justice."