Sir Claude was stationed at the window; he didn’t
so much as turn round, and it was left to the youngest
of the three to take up the remark. “Do
you mean you went to see her yesterday?”
“She came to see me. She knocked at
my shabby door. She mounted my squalid stair.
She told me she had seen you at Folkestone.”
Maisie wondered. “She went back that evening?”
“No; yesterday morning. She drove to me
straight from the station. It was most remarkable.
If I had a job to get off she did nothing to make
it worse—she did a great deal to make it
better.” Mrs. Wix hung fire, though the
flame in her face burned brighter; then she became
capable of saying: “Her ladyship’s
kind! She did what I didn’t expect.”
Maisie, on this, looked straight at her stepfather’s
back; it might well have been for her at that hour
a monument of her ladyship’s kindness. It
remained, as such, monumentally still, and for a time
that permitted the child to ask of their companion:
“Did she really help you?”
“Most practically.” Again Mrs. Wix
paused; again she quite resounded. “She
gave me a ten-pound note.”
At that, still looking out, Sir Claude, at the window,
laughed loud. “So you see, Maisie, we’ve
not quite lost it!”
“Oh no,” Maisie responded. “Isn’t
that too charming?” She smiled at Mrs. Wix.
“We know all about it.” Then on her
friend’s showing such blankness as was compatible
with such a flush she pursued: “She does
want me to have you?”
Mrs. Wix showed a final hesitation, which, however,
while Sir Claude drummed on the window-pane, she presently
surmounted. It came to Maisie that in spite of
his drumming and of his not turning round he was really
so much interested as to leave himself in a manner
in her hands; which somehow suddenly seemed to her
a greater proof than he could have given by interfering.
“She wants me to have you!” Mrs. Wix
declared.
Maisie answered this bang at Sir Claude. “Then
that’s nice for all of us.”
Of course it was, his continued silence sufficiently
admitted while Mrs. Wix rose from her chair and, as
if to take more of a stand, placed herself, not without
majesty, before the fire. The incongruity of her
smartness, the circumference of her stiff frock, presented
her as really more ready for Paris than any of them.
She also gazed hard at Sir Claude’s back.
“Your wife was different from anything she had
ever shown me. She recognises certain proprieties.”
“Which? Do you happen to remember?”
Sir Claude asked.
Mrs. Wix’s reply was prompt. “The
importance for Maisie of a gentlewoman, of some one
who’s not—well, so bad! She objects
to a mere maid, and I don’t in the least mind
telling you what she wants me to do.” One
thing was clear—Mrs. Wix was now bold enough
for anything. “She wants me to persuade
you to get rid of the person from Mrs. Beale’s.”
