Mrs. Wix looked hard at the flame of the candle.
“Held out—?”
“Why, she has been making love to you.
Has she won you over?”
Mrs. Wix transferred her intensity to her pupil’s
face. “Over to what?”
“To HER keeping me instead.”
“Instead of Sir Claude?” Mrs. Wix was
distinctly gaining time.
“Yes; who else? since it’s not instead
of you.”
Mrs. Wix coloured at this lucidity. “Yes,
that IS what she means.”
“Well, do you like it?” Maisie asked.
She actually had to wait, for oh her friend was embarrassed!
“My opposition to the connexion—theirs—would
then naturally to some extent fall. She has treated
me to-day as if I weren’t after all quite such
a worm; not that I don’t know very well where
she got the pattern of her politeness. But of
course,” Mrs. Wix hastened to add, “I shouldn’t
like her as THE one nearly so well as him.”
“‘Nearly so well!’” Maisie
echoed. “I should hope indeed not.”
She spoke with a firmness under which she was herself
the first to quiver. “I thought you ‘adored’
him.”
“I do,” Mrs. Wix sturdily allowed.
“Then have you suddenly begun to adore her too?”
Mrs. Wix, instead of directly answering, only blinked
in support of her sturdiness. “My dear,
in what a tone you ask that! You’re coming
out.”
“Why shouldn’t I? YOU’VE come
out. Mrs. Beale has come out. We each have
our turn!” And Maisie threw off the most extraordinary
little laugh that had ever passed her young lips.
There passed Mrs. Wix’s indeed the next moment
a sound that more than matched it. “You’re
most remarkable!” she neighed.
Her pupil, though wholly without aspirations to pertness,
barely faltered. “I think you’ve
done a great deal to make me so.”
“Very true, I have.” She dropped
to humility, as if she recalled her so recent self-arraignment.
“Would you accept her then? That’s
what I ask,” said Maisie.
“As a substitute?” Mrs. Wix turned it
over; she met again the child’s eyes. “She
has literally almost fawned upon me.”
“She hasn’t fawned upon HIM. She
hasn’t even been kind to him.”
Mrs. Wix looked as if she had now an advantage.
“Then do you propose to ‘kill’ her?”
“You don’t answer my question,”
Maisie persisted. “I want to know if you
accept her.”
Mrs. Wix continued to hedge. “I want to
know if YOU do!”
Everything in the child’s person, at this, announced
that it was easy to know. “Not for a moment.”
“Not the two now?” Mrs. Wix had caught
on; she flushed with it. “Only him alone?”
“Him alone or nobody.”
“Not even ME?” cried Mrs. Wix.
Maisie looked at her a moment, then began to undress.
“Oh you’re nobody!”
