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She should serve their anger and seal their revenge, for husband and wife had been

alike crippled

or, to put it differently, offered them both as bad indeed, since they were only as good as each

other.

Nothing could have been more touching at

first than her failure

the father's plea was that the

mother's lightest touch was "simply contamination."

The mother had wished to prevent the father from, as she said,

"so much as looking" at the child;

to suspect the ordeal that awaited her little

unspotted soul.

in which Maisie was to be educated--she was to fit

them together as she might.

This was a society in which for the most part people were occupied

only with chatter,

but the disunited couple had at last grounds for

expecting a time of high activity.

contradiction grew young again over teacups

and cigars.

inasmuch as what marriage had mainly suggested to them was the

unbroken opportunity to quarrel.

it was indeed a great deal to be able

to say for Ida that no one but Beale desired her blood, and for Beale that if he should ever have his eyes scratched out it would be only by his wife.

The sole flaw in Ida's beauty was a length and reach of arm conducive perhaps to her having so often beaten her ex-husband

at billiards,

a game in which she showed a superiority largely

accountable, as she maintained, for the resentment finding expression in his physical violence.

By the time she had grown sharper, as the gentlemen who had

criticised her calves used to say,

all tumbled up too with the

things, shuffled into the same receptacle, that her mother had said about her father.

The great strain meanwhile

was that of carrying by the right end the things her father said about

her mother--

things mostly indeed that Moddle, on a glimpse of them, as if they had been complicated toys or difficult books, took out of her

hands and put away in the closet.

A wonderful assortment of objects of

this kind she was to discover there later,

she found in her mind a collection of

images and echoes to which meanings were attachable--images and echoes

kept for her in the childish dusk, the dim closet, the high drawers,

like games she wasn't yet big enough to play.

She had the knowledge that on a certain occasion which every day brought

nearer her mother would be at the door to take her away, and this would

have darkened all the days

In silks and velvets and diamonds and pearls, to go out: so that it was a real support to Maisie, at the supreme hour, to feel how, by Moddle's

direction, the paper was thrust away in her pocket and there clenched in her fist.

These promises ranged from "a mother's fond love" to "a nice poached egg to your tea," and took by the way the prospect

of sitting up ever so late to see the lady in question dressed,

The supreme hour was to furnish her with a vivid reminiscence, that of a strange outbreak in the drawing-room on the part of Moddle, who, in reply to something her father had just said, cried aloud:

if the ingenious Moddle hadn't written on a

paper in very big easy words ever so many pleasures that she would enjoy

at the other house.

Maisie was not at the moment so fully

conscious of them as of the wonder of Moddle's sudden disrespect and

crimson face; but she was able to produce them in the course of five

minutes when, in the carriage, her mother, all kisses, ribbons, eyes, arms, strange sounds and sweet smells, said to her:

"And did your beastly papa, my precious angel, send any message to your own loving

mamma?"

The carriage, with her mother in it, was at the door; a gentleman who was there, who was always there, laughed out very

loud; her father,

who had her in his arms, said to Moddle: "My dear

woman, I'll settle you presently!"--after which he repeated, showing his teeth more than ever at Maisie while he hugged her, the words for

which her nurse had taken him up.

she was the little

feathered shuttlecock they could fiercely keep flying between them.

The evil they had the gift of thinking or pretending to think of each other

they poured into her little gravely-gazing soul as into a boundless

receptacle,

to the actual with a good faith

that might have been touching to either parent.

and each of them had doubtless the best conscience in the world as to the duty of teaching her the stern truth that should be her

safeguard against the other.

The objurgation for instance launched

in the carriage by her mother after

she had at her father's bidding

punctually performed was a missive that dropped into her memory with the

dry rattle of a letter falling into a pillar-box.

the associates of either party sometimes felt that something should be done for what they called

"the real good, don't you know?" of the child.

that she fortunately wasn't all the year round where she happened to be at the

awkward moment, and that, furthermore, either from extreme cunning or

from extreme stupidity, she appeared not to take things in.

In the presence of these overflowings,

after they had continued for a couple of years,

Nothing was so easy

to her as to send the ladies who gathered there off into shrieks,

She had learned that at

these doors it was wise not to knock--

this seemed to produce from within

such sounds of derision.

for it befell that she was enlightened by Lisette's questions, which

reproduced the effect of her own upon those for whom she sat in the very darkness of Lisette.

wondering the while whether

she succeeded in the air of shading off, like her mother, into the unknowable.

She could only pass on her lessons and study to produce on Lisette the

impression of having mysteries in her life,

emulating her governess and bridging over the

interval with the simple expectation of trust.

She became aware in time that this phase wouldn't have shone by

lessons, the care of her education being now only one of the many

duties devolving on Miss Overmore;

a devolution as to which she was

present at various passages between that lady and her father--passages

significant, on either side, of dissent and even of displeasure.

It was gathered by the child on these occasions that there was something in the

situation for which her mother might "come down" on them all,

Though indeed the remark, always dropped by her father, was greeted on his

companion's part with direct contradiction. Such scenes were usually brought to a climax by Miss Overmore's demanding, with more asperity

than she applied to any other subject, in what position under the sun

such a person as Mrs. Farange would find herself for coming down.

She got used to the idea that her mother, for some reason, was

in no hurry to reinstate her:

that idea was forcibly expressed by her

father whenever Miss Overmore, differing and decided, took him up on the

question, which he was always putting forward, of the urgency of sending

her to school.

That, however, Maisie learned, was just what would bring her mother down:

from the moment he should delegate to others the housing of his

little charge he hadn't a leg to stand on before the law.

Miss Overmore intimated, to Mr. Farange himself and to the friendly noisy little house

and those who came there.

Mr. Farange's remedy for every inconvenience

was that the child should be put at school--there were such lots of splendid schools,

arguing against it with great public

relish and wanting to know from all comers--she put it even to Maisie herself--they didn't see how frightfully it would give her away. "

There was also the solution of a second governess, a young person to

come in by the day and really do the work; but to this Miss Overmore

wouldn't for a moment listen,

Mrs. Farange was one of these

others?

Didn't he keep

her away from her mother precisely because

don't you see, if I'm not here to look

after her?

which every one indeed appeared quite to understand, he practically, he

selfishly prevented.

The way out of it of course was just to do her plain duty; but that was

unfortunately what, with his excessive, his exorbitant demands on her,

had enclosed a "cabinet" photograph

of Sir Claude, and Maisie lost herself in admiration of the fair smooth face, the regular features, the kind eyes, the amiable air, the general glossiness and smartness of her prospective stepfather--only vaguely puzzled to suppose herself now with two fathers at once.

It would still be

essentially a struggle,

drawing from the pocket of her dingy old

pelisse a small flat parcel, removed its envelope and wished to know if THAT looked like a gentleman who wouldn't be nice to everybody–let alone to a person he would be so sure to find so nice.

Mrs. Wix, after Miss Overmore's last demonstration, addressed herself

wholly to the little girl, and,

"You can see, I hope," she

added with much expression, "that HE'S a perfect gentleman!" Maisie had

never before heard the word "sympathetic" applied to anybody's face;

No sooner had she done so than she looked up from it at Miss Overmore: this was with the sudden instinct of appealing

as she still held the

photograph and Sir Claude continued to fraternise, "Oh can't I keep it?" she broke out.

The photograph was a possession that, direly denuded, she clung to,

it was stricken and almost scared,

as if her young friend really expected more of her than she had to give.

but of course if it would give you particular

pleasure--" she faltered, only gasping her surrender.

"Isn't he just lovely?" she demanded while

poor Mrs. Wix hungrily wavered,

Maisie saw that her own avidity would

triumph, and she held out the picture to Miss Overmore as if she were

quite proud of her mother.

"If the photograph's your

property, my dear, I shall be happy to oblige you

The pathetic quaver of this brave boast was

not lost on Maisie, who threw herself so gratefully on the speaker's

neck that, when they had concluded their embrace, the public tenderness

of which, she felt, made up

I believe, in any other! Keep the pretty picture, by all means, my precious," she

went on: "Sir Claude will be happy himself, I dare say, to give me one

with a kind inscription."

for the sacrifice she imposed, their

companion had had time to lay a quick hand on Sir Claude and, with a

glance at him or not, whisk him effectually out of sight.

Released from the child's arms Mrs. Wix looked about for the picture; then she fixed

Miss Overmore with a hard dumb stare;

Even after her loyal hug Maisie felt a bit of

a sneak

But Mrs. Wix left them in

"She has definitely engaged me--for her return and for yours. Then you'll see

for yourself." Maisie,

to answer when spoken to and the experience of

lively penalties on obeying that prescription.

The child's discipline had been bewildering--had ranged freely between the

prescription that she was

on the spot, quite believed she should; but

the prospect was suddenly thrown into confusion by an extraordinary demonstration from Miss Overmore.

Miss Overmore's words were directed to her pupil, but her face, lighted

with an irony that made it

prettier even than ever before, was presented

to the dingy figure that had stiffened itself for departure.