What he presently said was: "Are you putting up for the night?"
His wife cast grandly about. "Not here—I've come from Dover."
Over Maisie's head, at this, they still faced each other. "You spend the night there?"
"Yes, I brought some things. I went to the hotel and hastily arranged; then I caught the train that whisked me on here. You see what a day I've had of it."
The statement may surprise, but these were really as obliging if not as lucid words as, into her daughter's ears at least, Ida's lips had ever dropped; and there was a quick desire in the daughter that for the hour at any rate they should duly be welcomed as a ground of intercourse. Certainly mamma had a charm which, when turned on, became a large explanation; and the only danger now in an impulse to applaud it would be that of appearing to signalise its rarity. Maisie, however, risked the peril in the geniality of an admission that Ida had indeed had a rush; and she invited Sir Claude to expose himself by agreeing with her that the rush had been even worse than theirs. He appeared to meet this appeal by saying with detachment enough: "You go back there to-night?"
"Oh yes—there are plenty of trains." Again Sir Claude hesitated; it would have been hard to say if the child, between them, more connected or divided them. Then he brought out quietly: "It will be late for you to knock about. I'll see you over."
"You needn't trouble, thank you. I think you won't deny that I can help myself and that it isn't the first time in my dreadful life that I've somehow managed it." Save for this allusion to her dreadful life they talked there, Maisie noted, as if they were only rather superficial friends; a special effect that she had often wondered at before in the midst of what she supposed to be intimacies. This effect was augmented by the almost casual manner in which her ladyship went on: "I dare say I shall go abroad."
"From Dover do you mean, straight?"
"How straight I can't say. I'm excessively ill."
This for a minute struck Maisie as but a part of the conversation; at the end of which time she became aware that it ought to strike her—though it apparently didn't strike Sir Claude—as a part of something graver. It helped her to twist nearer. "Ill, mamma—really ill?"