He took her in his arms and kissed her, close and quick, so that no thought could come between.

But Maisie’s sweetness had not done its worst.  She had yet to prove what she was and what she could do.

v

July passed and August; the harvest was over.  And in September Jerrold went up to London to stay with Eliot for the week-end, and Anne stayed with Maisie, because Maisie didn’t like being left in the big house by herself.  Through all those weeks that was the way Maisie had her, through her need of her.

And on the Thursday before Anne came Maisie had called on Mrs. Hawtrey of Medlicote, and Mrs. Hawtrey had asked her to lunch with her on the following Monday.  Maisie said she was afraid she couldn’t lunch on Monday because Anne Severn would be with her, and Mrs. Hawtrey said she was very sorry, but she was afraid she couldn’t ask Anne Severn.

And Maisie enquired in her tender voice, “Why not?”

And Mrs. Hawtrey replied, “Because, my dear, nobody here does ask Anne
Severn.”

Maisie said again, “Why not?”

Then Mrs. Hawtrey said she didn’t want to go into it, the whole thing was so unpleasant, but nobody did call on Anne Severn.  She was too well known.

And at that Maisie rose in her fragile dignity and said that nobody knew Anne Severn so well as she and her husband did, and that there was nobody in the world so absolutely good as Anne, and that she couldn’t possibly know anybody who refused to know her, and so left Mrs. Hawtrey.

The evening Jerrold came home, Maisie, flushed with pleasure, entertained him with a report of the encounter.

“So you’ve given an ultimatum to the county.”

“Yes.  I told you I’d cut them all if they went on cutting Anne.  And now they know it.”

“That means that you won’t know anybody, Maisie.  Except for Anne and me you’ll be absolutely alone here.”

“I don’t care.  I don’t want anybody but you and Anne.  And if I do we can ask somebody down.  There are lots of amusing people who’d come.  And Eliot can bring his scientific crowd.  It simply means that Corbetts and Hawtreys won’t be asked to meet them, that’s all.”

She went upstairs to lie down before dinner, and presently Anne came to him in the drawing-room.  She was dressed in her riding coat and breeches as she had come off the land.

“What do you think Maisie’s done now?” he said.

“I don’t know.  Something that’ll make me feel awful, I suppose.”

“If you’re going to take it like that I won’t tell you.”

“Yes.  Tell me.  Tell me.  I’d rather know.”

He told her as Maisie had told him.

“Can’t you see her, standing up to the whole county?  Pounding them with her little hands.”

His vision of the gentle thing, rising up in that sudden sacred fury of protection, moved him to admiring, tender laughter.  It made Anne burst into tears.