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The note of hilarity brought people together still more than the note of melancholy, which was the one exclusively

sounded, for instance,

She was a guide to peregrinations that had little in common with those

intensely definite airings

by poor Mrs. Wix. Maisie in these days preferred

none the less that domestic revels should be wafted to her from a distance: she felt sadly unsupported for facing the inquisition of the

drawing-room.

The dangers of the town equally with its

diversions added to Maisie's

There had been under Moddle's system

no dawdles at shop-windows and

no nudges, in Oxford Street, of "I SAY,

look at 'ER!"

from her predicament by rising before her as

the original of the photograph of Sir Claude.

Crossing the threshold in a cloud of shame she discerned through the blur Mrs. Beale seated there with a gentleman who

immediately drew the pain

It was as if he had told her on the spot

that he belonged to her, so that she

as quickly throbbed into a strange shy pride

in him, a perception of his making up for her fallen state, for Susan's public nudges, which quite bruised her, and for all the lessons that, in

the dead schoolroom, where at times she was almost afraid to stay alone, she was bored with not having.

They had grown almost

intimate--or had the air of it--over their discussion; and it was still

further conveyed to Maisie that

was as bright as that of a Christmas-tree, that he knew her ever so well by her mother, but had

come to see her now so that he might know her for himself.

She could see that his view of this kind of knowledge was to make her come away

with him, and, further, that it was just what he was there for and had

already been some time:

arranging it with Mrs. Beale and getting on with

that lady in a manner evidently not at all affected by her having on the arrival of his portrait thought of him so ill.

Mrs. Beale had made no secret, and would

make yet less of one, of all that it cost to let her go.

"that I hope you're at least

clear about Sir Claude's relation to you”.

she was herself deceitful; yet she had never

concealed anything bigger than a thought.

We've been married, my dear child, three

months, and my interest in you is a consequence, don't you know?

to Sir Claude. She spoke as if his dilemma were ludicrous.

except just to the door." Then as she thought

afresh: "Can't she come even to the door now?"

"Oh I know," Maisie said with all the candour of her competence. "She

can't come herself--

Maisie pursued the subject. "But

papa--HE has married Miss Overmore."

"I'LL come for you," said her stepmother, "if Sir Claude keeps you too long: we must

make him quite understand that! Don't talk to me about her ladyship!"

she went on

clasped in a still tenderer embrace, felt

entrancingly the extension of the field of happiness.

"Oh that's what makes it so hard to give her up!" Mrs. Beale made this

point with her arms out to her stepdaughter. Maisie, quitting Sir

Claude, went over to them and,

and that, in its turn, presently left her free

to catch at the pleasant possibility, in connexion with herself, of a relation much happier as between Mrs. Beale and Sir Claude than as

between mamma and papa.

Maisie had so often heard them called so that the remark diverted her

but an instant from the agreeable wonder of this grand new form of

allusion to her mother;

All that Mrs. Beale had

nevertheless to add

as her small stoicism had

perfectly taken for granted that it would be.

though still moved to

mirth, coloured a little; but he spoke to her very kindly.

"But perhaps it's hardly civil for me

to say that of his not objecting to have YOU in the house. If you knew

"It will be very interesting, my dear, you know, to find out what it is to-day that

your father does mind. I'm sure _I_ don't know!"--

He laughed back at Mrs. Beale; he looked at such moments quite as Mrs.

Wix, in the long stories

she told her pupil, always described the lovers

of her distressed beauties--"the perfect gentleman and strikingly handsome."

her close

and looking thoughtfully over her head at their visitor.

who one marries, I think.

The truth about me is simply that I'm the

most unappreciated of--what do you call the fellows?--'family-men.' Yes,

I'm a family-man;

which Maisie recognised as a memory

of other years the rattle of her trinkets and the scratch of her endearments, the odour of her clothes and the jumps of her conversation.

It was her affections, Maisie could easily see, that led Ida to break out into questions as to what had passed at the other house

between that horrible woman

and Sir Claude; but it was also just here

that the little girl was able to recall the effect with which in earlier

days she had practised the pacific art of stupidity.

This picturesque parent showed literally a grander stature and a nobler

presence, things which,

with some others that might have been

bewildering, were handsomely accounted for by the romantic state of her affections.

she could bear anything that helped her to feel she

had done something for Sir Claude.

She was awestruck at the manner in which

a lady might be affected

through the passion mentioned by Mrs. Wix; she

held her breath with the sense of picking her steps among the tremendous things of life.

What she did, however, now, after the interview with her mother, impart to Mrs. Wix was that, in spite of her having had her

"good" effect,

as she called it--the effect she studied, the effect of

harmless vacancy--her ladyship's last words had been that her ladyship's duty by her would be thoroughly done.

Over this announcement governess

and pupil looked at each other in silent profundity;

but as the weeks went by it had no consequences that interfered gravely with the breezy

gallop of making up.

Mrs. Wix had a new dress and, as she was the first to proclaim, a better position; so it

all struck Maisie

as a crowded brilliant life, with, for the time, Mrs.

Beale and Susan Ash simply "left out" like children not invited to a Christmas party.

and he came into the schoolroom repeatedly to let them know how beautifully he felt everything had gone off and everything would go on.

He was too pleased--didn't he constantly say as much?--with the good impression made, in a wide circle, by Ida's sacrifices;

the possibility of her ladyship's coming down

on them, in her sudden highbred way, with a school.

Mrs. Wix had a secret terror which, like most of her secret feelings, she discussed with her little companion, in great

solemnity, by the hour:

a conviction of the strength of Sir Claude's

grasp of the situation.

an umbrella with a malachite knob, and to Maisie both chocolate-creams and story-books, besides a lovely greatcoat (which he took her out all alone to buy) and ever so many games in boxes, with printed directions, and a bright red frame for the

protection of his famous photograph.

where he had been, a wonderful picture of

society, and even with pretty presents that showed how in absence he thought of his home.

He disappeared at times for days, when his patient friends understood

that her ladyship would naturally absorb him; but he always came back

with the drollest stories of

Mrs. Wix's part to master what "it said" on the

papers.

she called it with an air to which her

sounding of the words gave the only grandeur Maisie was to have seen her wear save on a certain occasion hereafter to be described, an occasion when the poor lady was grander than all of them put together.

was a part of their tenderness for him not to let

him think they had trouble.

but they had earnest discussions as to whether

they hadn't better appeal to him frankly for aid to understand them.

a heroism that--needless for Mrs. Wix to sound THOSE words--her ladyship, though

a blood-relation, was little enough the woman to be capable of.

it brought home to Maisie the way her humble

companion had sidled and ducked through life.

He shook hands with her, he recognised her, as she said, and above all, more than

once, he took her, with his stepdaughter,

This was not moreover from the want of opportunity, for there were no moments between

them at which the topic could be irrelevant, no subject they were going

into, not even the principal

dates or the auxiliary verbs, in which it

was further off than the turn of the page.

But it settled the question of the degree to which Sir Claude was a gentleman: he was

more of one than anybody else in the world--"I don't care,"

Mrs. Wix repeatedly remarked, "whom you may meet in grand society, nor even to

whom you may be contracted in marriage."

by the old-fashioned conscience, the dingy

decencies, of Maisie's simple instructress.

There were hours when Mrs.

Wix sighingly testified to the scruples she surmounted, seemed to ask

to draw up to the fire and talk about him; and if the

truth must be told this edifying interchange constituted for the time

the little girl's chief education.

"It isn't as if you didn't already

know everything, is it, love?" and "I can't make you any worse than

you ARE, can I, darling?"--

If the child couldn't be worse it was a comfort even to herself that she was bad--

these were the terms in which the good lady

justified to herself and her pupil her pleasant conversational ease.

several had elapsed without a visit from

Sir Claude--her governess turned the tables.

Even her profundity had left

a margin for a laugh; so she was a trifle startled by the solemn promptitude with which

rendered this truth particularly vivid, Maisie,

receptive and profound, suddenly said to her companion: "And you, my

dear, are you in love with him too?"

One day when some accident, some crash of a banged door or some scurry of

a scared maid, had

Mrs. Wix plumped out: "Over head and ears.

I've NEVER since you ask me, been so far gone."

It might in

fact have expressed

she could see, with hesitation, but

clearly intending a joke.

Then before (on the subject of Mrs. Beale) he let her "draw" him--that was another of his words; it was astonishing how many

she gathered in--

The way Sir Claude looked about the schoolroom had made her feel

with humility as if it

were not very different from the shabby attic in

which she had visited Susan Ash.

He had said as well that there were all sorts of things they ought to have; yet

governess and pupil, it had to be admitted, were still divided between

discussing the places

where any sort of thing would look best if any

sort of thing should ever come and acknowledging that mutability in the

child's career which was naturally unfavourable to accumulation.

Then he had said in abrupt reference to

Mrs. Beale: "Do you think

"But, I mean, does she love you for yourself, as they call it,

so that's not so wonderful, and she's

not the only one. But if she's so fond of you, why doesn't she write to you?"

"I see--that's quite right," he answered. "She might get at you--there

are all sorts of ways. But of course

"Oh on account of mamma." This was rudimentary, and she was almost

surprised at the simplicity

Abide her."

wouldn't hold her tongue for any

such thing as that, would she?"

had done so; but she desired to protect

Mrs. Beale too.

Maisie remembered how little she

At this Sir Claude only smiled. "No, I dare say not. But here we mind,

don't we?--we take care what we say. I don't suppose it's a matter on

which I ought to prejudice you,"

on which it's awfully awkward for

you to speak.

he went on; "but I think we must on the

whole be rather nicer here than at your father's.

"I'm afraid we can't do much for her just

now. I haven't seen her since

It was inevitable to say to her,

however, that of course her mother

falling once more, in spite of himself,

into the scruple of showing the child he didn't trip--to go there without it.

He couldn't go there again with his wife's consent, and he wasn't the

man--he begged her to believe,

had gone to Mrs. Beale's to fetch

away Maisie, but that was altogether different.

Sir Claude moreover recognised on this

occasion that perhaps things would take a turn later on; and he wound

up by saying: "I'm sure she does sincerely care for you--how can she possibly help it? She's very young and very pretty and very clever: I think she's charming. But we must walk very straight. If you'll help me,

you know, I'll help YOU," he

he to give her mother for paying

calls on her father's wife?

concluded in the pleasant fraternising,

equalising, not a bit patronising way which made the child ready to go through anything for him and the beauty of which, as she dimly felt, was

that it was so much less a deceitful descent to her years than a real indifference to them.

And of course Mrs. Beale couldn't come to

Ida's--Ida would tear her limb from limb. Maisie, with this talk of

pretexts, remembered how much

Mrs. Beale had made of her being a good

one, and how, for such a function, it was her fate to be either much depended on or much missed.