 CHAPTER X He was smoking a cigarette, and he stood before the fire and looked at the meager appointments of the room in a way that made her rather ashamed of them. 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. He remarked that really Mamma kept them rather low on the question of decorations. Mrs. Wicks had put up a Japanese fan and two rather grim texts. She had wished they were gayer, but they were all she happened to have. Without Sir Claude's photograph, however, the place would have been, as he said, as dull as a cold dinner. 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 unfavorable to accumulation. She stayed long enough only to miss things, not half long enough to deserve them. 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. Then he had said an abrupt reference to Mrs. Beale. Do you think she really cares for you? Oh! awfully, Maisie had replied. But I mean, does she love you for herself, as they call it, don't you know? Is she as fond of you now as Mrs. Wicks? The child turned it over. Oh! I'm not every bit Mrs. Beale has!" Sir Claude seemed much amused at this. No! you're not every bit she has. He laughed for some moments, but that was an old story to Maisie, who was not too much disconcerted to go on. But she'll never give me up. Well, I won't either, old boy, 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? Oh! on account of mamma! This was rudimentary, and she was almost surprised at the simplicity of Sir Claude's question. I see. That's quite right," he answered. She might get at you, there are all sorts of ways, but of course there's Mrs. Wicks. There's Mrs. Wicks! Maisie lucidly concurred. Mrs. Wicks can't abide her! Sir Claude seemed interested. Oh! she can't abide her! Then what does she say about her? Nothing at all, because she knows I shouldn't like it. Isn't it sweet of her? the child asked. Certainly! Rather nice! Mrs. Beale wouldn't hold her tongue for any such thing as that, would she? Maisie remembered how little she had done so, but she desired to protect Mrs. Beale too. The only protection she could think of, however, was the plea— Oh! at papa's, you know, they don't mind. 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," he went on. But I think we must on the whole be rather nicer here than at your father's. However, I don't press that, for it's the sort of question on which it's awfully awkward for you to speak. Don't worry at any rate, I assure you I'll back you up. Then after a moment, and while he smoked, he reverted to Mrs. Beale and the child's first inquiry. I'm afraid we can't do much for her just now. I haven't seen her since that day. Upon my word, I haven't seen her. The next instant, with the laugh the least bit foolish, the young man slightly coloured, he must have felt this profession of innocence to be excessive as addressed to Maisie. It was inevitable to say to her, however, that of course her mother loathed the lady of the other house. He couldn't go there again with his wife's consent, and he wasn't the man—he begged her to believe, falling once more in spite of himself into the scruple of showing the child he didn't trip—to go there without it. He was liable in talking with her to take the tone of her being also a man of the world. He had gone to Mrs. Beale's to fetch away Maisie, but that was altogether different. Now that she was in her mother's house, what protects Tattie to give her mother for paying calls on her father's wife? And, of course, Mrs. Beale couldn't come to Ida's—Ida would tear her limb from limb. Maisie, with this talk of protects, 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. Sir Claude moreover recognized 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 concluded, in the pleasant fraternizing, equalizing, not a bit patronizing 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. It gave her moments of secret rapture, moments of believing she might help him indeed. The only mystification in this was the imposing time of life that her elders spoke of as youth. For Sir Claude then, Mrs. Beale was young. Just as for Mrs. Wicks, Sir Claude was. That was one of the merits for which Mrs. Wicks most commended him. What, therefore, was Maisie herself, and, in another relation to the matter, what, therefore, was Mamma? It took her some time to puzzle out with the aid of an experiment or two that it wouldn't do to talk about Mamma's youth. She even went so far one day in the presence of that lady's thick colour and marked lines, as to wonder if it would occur to any one but herself to do so. Yet, if she wasn't young, then she was old, and this threw an odd light on her having a husband of a different generation. Mr. Farage was still older. That, Maisie perfectly knew, and it brought her in due course to the perception of how much more, since Mrs. Beale was younger than Sir Claude, papa must be older than Mrs. Beale. Such discoveries were disconcerting, and even a trifle confounding. These persons, it appeared, were not of the age they ought to be. This was somehow particularly the case with Mamma, and the fact made her reflect with some relief on her not having gone with Mrs. Wicks into the question of Sir Claude's attachment to his wife. She was conscious that in confining their attention to the state of her ladyship's own affections they had been controlled, Mrs. Wicks, perhaps, in a special, by delicacy and even by embarrassment. The end of her colloquy with her stepfather in the schoolroom was her saying, Then if we're not to see Mrs. Beale at all, it isn't what she seemed to think when you came for me. He looked rather blank. What did she seem to think? Why, that I've brought you together. She thought that, Sir Claude asked. Maisie was surprised at his already forgetting it. Just as I had brought papa and her, don't you remember she said so? It came back to Sir Claude in a peel of laughter. Oh, yes, she said so. And you said so? Maisie lucidly pursued. He recovered with increasing mirth the whole occasion. And you said so? He retorted as if they were playing a game. Then were we all mistaken? He considered a little. No, on the whole not. I dare say it's just what you have done. We are together. It's really most odd. She's thinking of us, of you and me, though we don't meet, and I've no doubt you'll find it will be all right when you go back to her. Am I going back to her? Maisie brought out with a little gasp, which was like a sudden clutch of the happy present. It appeared to make Sir Claude grave a moment. It might have made him feel the weight of the pledge his action had given. Oh, some day, I suppose, we've plenty of time. I've such a tremendous lot to make up," Maisie said with a sense of great boldness. Certainly, and you must make up every hour of it. Oh, I'll see that you do." This was encouraging. And to show cheerfully that she was reassured, she replied, That's what Mrs. Wicks sees, too. Oh, yes, said Sir Claude. Mrs. Wicks and I are shoulder to shoulder. Maisie took in a little this strong image, after which she exclaimed, Then I've done it also to you and her. I've brought you together. Blessed if you haven't, Sir Claude laughed, and more upon my word than any of the lot. Oh, you've done for us. Now, if you could, as I suggested you know that day, only manage me and your mother. The child wondered, Bring you and her together. You see, we're not together, not a bit. But I oughtn't to tell you such things, all the more that you won't really do it, not you. No, old chap. The young man continued, There you'll break down. But it won't matter, we'll rub along. The great thing is that you and I are all right. We're all right," echoed Maisie devoutly. But the next moment, in the light of what he had just said, she asked, How shall I ever leave you? It was as if she must somehow take care of him. His smile did justice to her anxiety. Oh, well, you needn't. It won't come to that. Do you mean that when I do go you'll go with me? Sir Claude cast about. Not exactly with you, perhaps, but I shall never be far off. But how do you know where my mom may take you? He laughed again. I don't, I confess. Then he had an idea, though something too jacose. That will be for you to see, that she shan't take me too far. How can I help it? Maisie inquired in surprise. Mama doesn't care for me, she said very simply. Not really. Child as she was, her little long history was in the words, and it was as impossible to contradict her as if she had been venerable. Sir Claude's silence was an admission of this, and still more the tone in which he presently replied, that won't prevent her from, some time or other, leaving me with you. Then we'll live together, she eagerly demanded. I'm afraid, said Sir Claude, smiling, that that will be Mrs. Beale's real chance. Her eagerness just slightly dropped at this. She remembered Mrs. Wicks's pronouncement that it was all an extraordinary model. To take me again? Well, can't you come to see me there? Oh, I daresay. Though there were parts of childhood Maisie had lost, she had all childhood's preference for the particular promise. Then you will come, you'll come often, won't you? She insisted. While at the moment she spoke the door opened for the return of Mrs. Wicks. Sir Claude, hereupon, instead of replying, gave her a look which left her silent and embarrassed. When he again found privacy convenient, however, which happened to be long and coming, he took up their conversation very much where it had dropped. You see, my dear, if I shall be able to go to you with your father's, it yet isn't at all the same thing for Mrs. Beale to come to you here. Maisie gave a thoughtful assent to this proposition, though conscious she could scarcely herself say just where the difference would lie. She felt how much her stepfather saved her, as he said with his habitual amusement, the trouble of that. I shall probably be able to go to Mrs. Beale's without your mother knowing it. Maisie stared with a certain thrill at the dramatic element in this, and she couldn't come here without Mama's. She was unable to articulate the word for what Mama would do. My dear child, Mrs. Wicks would tell of it. But I thought, Maisie objected, that Mrs. Wicks and you are such brothers in arms, Sir Claude caught her up. Oh yes, about everything but Mrs. Beale, and if you should suggest, he went on, that we might somehow or other hide her peeping in from Mrs. Wicks. Oh, I don't suggest that! Maisie in turn cut him short. Sir Claude looked as if he could indeed quite see why. No, it would really be impossible. There came to her from this glance at what they might hide, the first small glimpse of something in him that she wouldn't have expected. There had been times when she had had to make the best of the impression that she was herself deceitful, yet she had never concealed anything bigger than a thought. Of course, she now concealed this thought of how strange it would be to see him hide, and while she was so actively engaged, he continued, Besides you know, I'm not afraid of your father. And you are of my mother. Rather, old man! Sir Claude returned. CHAPTER X It must not be supposed that her ladyship's intermissions were not qualified by demonstrations of another order, triumphal entries and breathless pauses, during which she seemed to take of everything in the room, from the state of the ceiling to that of her daughter's boot-toes, a survey that was rich in intentions. Sometimes she sat down, and sometimes she surged about, but her attitude wore equally in either case the grand air of the practical. She found so much to deplore that she left a great deal to expect, and bristled so with calculation that she seemed to scatter remedies and pledges. Her visits were as good as an outfit. Her manner, Mrs. Wicks once said, as good as a pair of curtains. But she was a person addicted to extremes, sometimes barely speaking to her child, and sometimes pressing this tender chute to a bosom cut, as Mrs. Wicks had also observed, remarkably low. She was always in a fearful hurry, and the lower the bosom was cut, the more it was to be gathered she was wanted elsewhere. She usually broke in alone, but sometimes Sir Claude was with her, and during all the earlier period there was nothing on which these appearances had had so delightful a bearing, as on the way her ladyship was, as Mrs. Wicks expressed it, under the spell. But isn't she under it? Maisie used an thoughtful but familiar reference to exclaim, after Sir Claude had swept Mamma away in peals of natural laughter. Not even in the old days of the convulsed ladies had she heard Mamma laugh so freely as in these moments of conjugal surrender, to the gait of which even a little girl could see she had at last a right, a little girl whose thoughtfulness was now all happy selfish meditation, on good omens and future fun. Unaccompanied in subsequent hours and with an effect of changing to meet a change, Ida took a tone superficially disconcerting and abrupt. The tone of having, at an immense cost, made over everything to Sir Claude and wishing others to know that if everything wasn't right, it was because Sir Claude was so dreadfully vague. He has made from the first such a row about you, she said on one occasion to Maisie, that I've told him to do for you himself and try how he likes it. See, I've washed my hands of you, I've made you over to him, and if you're discontented it's on him, please, you'll come down. So don't haul poor me up! I assure you, I've worries enough." One of these, visibly, was that the spell rejoiced in by the schoolroom fire was already in danger of breaking. Another was that she was finally forced to make no secret of her husband's unfitness for real responsibilities. The day came indeed when her breathless auditors learnt from her in bewilderment that what ailed him was that he was, alas, simply not serious. Maisie wept on Mrs. Wicks' bosom after hearing that Sir Claude was a butterfly, considering moreover that her governess but half-patched it up in coming out at various moments the next few days, with the opinion that it was proper to his station to be careless and free. That had been proper to every one station that she had yet encountered, save poor Mrs. Wicks' own, and the particular merit of Sir Claude had seemed precisely that he was different from everyone. She talked with him, however, as time went on, very freely about her mother. Being with him in this relation wholly without the fear that it kept her silent before her father, the fear of bearing tales and making bad things worse. He appeared to accept the idea that he had taken her over and made her, as he said, his particular lark. He quite agreed also that he was an awful fraud and an idle beast and a sorry dunce. And he never said a word to her against her mother. He only remained dumb and discouraged in the face of her ladieship's own overtopping earnestness. There were occasions when he even spoke as if he had wrenched his little charge from the arms of a parent who had fought for her tooth and nail. This was the very moral of a scene that flashed into vividness one day when the four happened to meet without company in the drawing-room, and Maisie found herself clutched to her mother's breast and passionately sobbed and shrieked over, made the subject of a demonstration evidently sequent to some sharp passage just enacted. The connection required that while she almost cradled the child in her arms, Ida should speak of her as hideously, as fatally, estranged, and should rail at Sir Claude as the cruel author of the outrage. He has taken you from me, she cried. He has set you against me, and you've been won away, and your horrid little mind has been poisoned. You've gone over to him. You've given yourself up to side against me and hate me. You never open your mouth to me. You know you don't, and you chatter to him like a dozen magpies. Don't lie about it. I hear you all over the place. You hang about him in a way that's barely decent. He can do what he likes with you. Well, then, let him, to his heart's content. He's been in such a hurry to take you that we'll see if it suits him to keep you. I'm very good to break my heart about it when you've no more feeling for me than a clammy little fish." She suddenly thrust the child away, and as a disgusted admission of failure, sent her flying across the room into the arms of Mrs. Wicks, whom at this moment, and even in the whirl of her transit, Maisie saw, very red, exchange a quick, queer look with Sir Claude. The impression of the look remained with her, confronting her with such a critical little view of her mother's explosion, that she felt the less ashamed of herself for incurring the reproach with which she had been cast off. Her father had once called her a heartless little beast, and now, though decidedly scared, she was as stiff and cold as if the description had been just. She was not even frightened enough to cry, which would have been a tribute to her mother's wrongs. She was only more than anything else curious about the opinion mutely expressed by their companions. Taking the earliest opportunity to question Mrs. Wicks on this subject, she elicited the remarkable reply, Well, my dear, it's her ladyship's game, and we must just hold on like grim death. Maisie could interpret at her leisure these ominous words. Her reflections, indeed, at this moment thickened to pace, and one of them made her sure that her governess had conversations, private, earnest, and not infrequent, with her denounced stepfather. She perceived in the light of a second episode that something beyond her knowledge had taken place in the house. The things beyond her knowledge, numerous enough in truth, had not hitherto, she believed, being the things that had been nearest to her. She had even had, in the past, a small smug conviction that in the domestic labyrinth she always kept the clue. This time too, however, she at last found out, with the discrete aid it had to be confessed, of Mrs. Wicks. Sir Claude's own assistance was abruptly taken from her, for his comment on her ladyship's game was to start on the spot, quite alone, for Paris, evidently because he wished to show a spirit when accused of bad behaviour. He might be fond of his stepdaughter, Maisie felt, without wishing her to be after all thrust on him in such a way. His absence, therefore, it was clear was a protest against the thrusting. It was while this absence lasted that our young lady finally discovered what had happened in the house to be that her mother was no longer in love. The limit of a passion for Sir Claude had certainly also been reached, she judged, some time before the day on which her ladyship burst suddenly into the school-room to introduce Mr. Perriman, who, as she announced from the doorway to Maisie, wouldn't believe his ears that one had a great hoidon of a daughter. Mr. Perriman was short and massive. Mrs. Wicks remarked afterwards that he was too fat for the pace, and it would have been difficult to say of him whether his head were more bald or his black moustache more bushy. He seemed also to have moustaches over his eyes, which, however, by no means prevented these polished little globes from rolling around the room as if they had been billiard balls impelled by Ida's celebrated stroke. Mr. Perriman wore on the hand that pulled his moustache a diamond of dazzling luster, in consequence of which, and of his general weight and mystery, our young lady observed on his departure that if he had only a turban he would have been quite her idea of a heathen Turk. He's quite my idea, Mrs. Wicks replied, of a heathen Jew. Well, I mean, said Maisie, of a person who comes from the east. That's where he must come from, her governess opened. He comes from the city. In a moment she added as if she knew all about him. He's one of those people who have lately broken out. He'll be immensely rich. On the death of his papa, the child interestedly inquired. Dear no, nothing hereditary, I mean, he has made a mass of money. How much do you think? Maisie demanded. Mrs. Wicks reflected and sketched it. Oh, many millions. A hundred? Mrs. Wicks was not sure of the number, but there were enough of them to have seemed to warm up for the time the penury of the schoolroom, to linger there as an afterglow of the hot, heavy light Mr. Perriam sensibly shed. This was also no doubt on his part, an effect of that enjoyment of life, with which, among her elders, Maisie had been in contact from her earliest years. The sign of happy maturity, the old familiar note of overflowing cheer. How do you do, mom? How do you do, little miss?" He laughed and nodded at the gaping figures. She has brought me up for a peep. It's true I wouldn't take you on trust. She's always talking about you, but she'd never produce you, so today I challenged her on the spot. Well, you ain't a myth, my dear, I back down on that. The visitor went on to Maisie. Nor you either, miss, though you might be to be sure. I bored him with you, darling. I bore every one, Ida said, and to prove that you are a sweet thing, as well as a fearfully old one, I told him he could judge for himself. So now he sees that you're a dreadful bouncing business and that you're poor old mummies, at least sixty!" and her ladyship smiled at Mr. Perriam, with the charm that her daughter had heard imputed to her at Papa's by the merry gentleman, who had so often wished to get from him what they call a rise. Her manner at that instant gave the child a glimpse more vivid than any yet enjoyed of the attraction that Papa, in remarkable language, always denied that she could put forth. Mr. Perriam, however, clearly recognized it in the humour with which he met her. I never said you ain't wonderful, did I ever say it, eh? And he appealed with pleasant confidence to the testimony of the schoolroom, about which itself also he evidently felt something might be expected of him. So this is their little place, eh? Charming! Charming! Charming! He repeated, as he vaguely looked round. The interrupted students clung together as if they had been personally exposed, but either relieved their embarrassment by a hunch of her high shoulders. This time the smile she addressed to Mr. Perriam had a beauty of sudden sadness. What on earth is a poor woman to do? The visitor's grimace grew more marked as he continued to look and the conscious little schoolroom felt still more like a cage at a menagerie. Charming! Charming! Charming! Mr. Perriam insisted, but the parenthesis closed with a prompt click. There you are! said her ladyship. Bye-bye! she sharply added. The next minute they were on the stairs, and Mrs. Wicks and her companion at the opened door and looking mutely at each other were reached by the sound of the large social current that carried them back to their life. It was singular, perhaps, after this that Maisie never put a question about Mr. Perriam, and it was still more singular that by the end of a week she knew all she didn't ask. What she most particularly knew, and the information came to her unsought straight from Mrs. Wicks, was that Sir Claude wouldn't at all care for the visits of a millionaire who was in and out of the upper rooms. How little he would care was proved by the fact that under the sense of them Mrs. Wicks' discretion broke down altogether. She was capable of a transfer of allegiance, capable, at the altar of propriety, of a desperate sacrifice of her ladyship. As against Mrs. Biel she more than once intimated, she had been willing to do the best for her, but as against Sir Claude she could do nothing for her at all. It was extraordinary the number of things that, still without a question, Maisie knew by the time her stepfather came back from Paris, came bringing her a splendid apparatus for painting in water-colors, and bringing Mrs. Wicks, by elapse of memory that would have been droll if it had not been a trifle disconcerting, a second and even a more elegant umbrella. He had forgotten all about the first, with which, buried in as many wrappers as a mummy of the pharaohs, she wouldn't for the world have done anything so profane as use it. Maisie knew, above all, that though she was now, by what she called an informal understanding, on Sir Claude's side, she had yet not uttered a word to him about Mr. Perriam. That gentleman became, therefore, a kind of flourishing public secret, out of the depths of which governess and pupil looked at each other portentously from the time their friend was restored to them. He was restored in great abundance, and it was marked that, though he appeared to have felt the need to take a stand against the risk of being too roughly saddled with the offspring of others, he at this period exposed himself more than ever before to the presumption of having created expectations. If it had become now, for that matter, a question of sides, there was at least a certain amount of evidence as to where they all were. Maisie, of course, in such a delicate position, was on nobody's, but Sir Claude had all the air of being on hers. If, therefore, Mrs. Wicks was on Sir Claude's, her ladyship on Mr. Perriam's, and Mr. Perriam presumably on her ladyship's, this left only Mrs. Beale and Mr. Farage to account for. Mrs. Beale clearly was, like Sir Claude, on Maisie's, and Papa it was to be supposed on Mrs. Beale's. Here, indeed, was a slight ambiguity, as Papa's being on Mrs. Beale's didn't somehow seem to place him quite on his daughter's. It sounded, as this young lady thought it over, very much like puss in the corner, and she could only wonder if the distribution of parties would lead to a rushing to and fro and a changing of places. She was in the presence, she felt, of restless change. Wasn't it restless enough that her mother and her stepfather should already be on different sides? That was the great thing that had domestically happened. Mrs. Wicks, besides, had turned another face. She had never been exactly gay, but her gravity was now an attitude as public as a posted placard. She seemed to sit in her new dress and brood over her lost delicacy, which had become almost as doleful a memory as that of poor Clara Matilda. It is hard for him, she often said to her companion, and it was surprising how competent on this point Maisie was conscious of being to agree with her. Hard as it was, however, Sir Claude had never shown to greater advantage than the gallant, generous, sociable way he carried it off, a way that drew from Mrs. Wicks a hundred expressions of relief at his not having suffered it to embitter him. It threw him more and more at last into the school room, where he had plainly begun to recognise that if he was to have the credit of perverting the innocent child, he might also at least have the amusement. He never came into the place without telling its occupants that they were the nicest people in the house. A remark which always led them to say to each other, Mr. Perriam—as loud as ever compressed lips and enlarged eyes could make them articulate—he caused Maisie to remember what she had said to Mrs. Beale about his having the nature of a good nurse, and rather more than she intended, before Mrs. Wicks, to bring the whole thing out by once remarking to him that none of her good nurses had smoked quite so much in the nursery. This had no more effect than it was meant to on his cigarettes. He was always smoking, but always declaring that it was death to him not to lead a domestic life. He led one, after all, in the school room—and there were hours of late evening when she had gone to bed—that Maisie knew he sat there talking with Mrs. Wicks of how to meet his difficulties. His consideration for this unfortunate woman, even in the midst of them, continued to show him as the perfect gentleman, and lifted the subject of his courtesy into an upper air of beatitude, in which her very pride had the hush of anxiety. He leans on me. He leans on me. She only announced from time to time, and she was more surprised than amused, when later on she accidentally found she had given her pupil the impression of a support literally supplied by her person. This glimpse of a misconception led her to be explicit, to put before the child, with an air of mourning and deed for such a stoop to the common, that what they talked about in the small hours, as they said, was the question of his taking right hold of life. The life she wanted him to take right hold of was the public. She, being I hasten to add in this connection, not the mistress of his fate, but only Mrs. Wicks herself. She had phrases about him that were full of easy understanding, yet full of morality. He's a wonderful nature, but he can't live like the lilies. He's all right, you know, but he must have a high interest. She had more than once remarked that his affairs were sadly involved, but that they must get him, Maisie and she, together apparently, into Parliament. The child took it from her with a flutter of importance that Parliament was his natural sphere, and she was the less prepared to recognize a hindrance as she had never heard of any affairs whatever that were not involved. She had in the old days once been told by Mrs. Beale that her very own were, and with the refreshment of knowing that she had affairs, the information hadn't in the least overwhelmed her. It was true and perhaps a little alarming that she had never heard of any such matter since then. Full of charm at any rate was the prospect of some day getting sir-clawed in, especially after Mrs. Wicks, as the fruit of more midnight colloquies, once went so far as to observe that she really believed it was all that was wanted to save him. This critic, with these words, struck her disciple as cropping up, after the manner of Mama when Mama talked, quite in a new place. The child stared as at the jump of a kangaroo. Save him from what? Mrs. Wicks debated, then covered a still greater distance. Why, just from awful misery! But the light of remarkable events soon enabled her companion to read it. It may indeed be said that these days brought on a high quickening of Maisie's direct perceptions of her sense of freedom to make out things for herself. This was helped by an emotion intrinsically far from sweet, the increase of the alarm that had most haunted her meditations. She had no need to be told, as on the marow of the revelation of Sir Claude's danger she was told by Mrs. Wicks, that her mother wanted more and more to know why the devil her father didn't send for her. She had too long expected Mama's curiosity on this point to express itself sharply. Maisie could meet such pressure so far as meaning it was to be in a position to reply, in words directly inspired, that Papa would be hanged before he'd again be saddled with her. She therefore recognized the hour that in troubled glimpses she had long foreseen, the hour when, the phrase for it came back to her from Mrs. Beale, with two fathers, two mothers, and two homes, six protections in all, she shouldn't know wherever to go. Such apprehension as she felt on this score was not diminished by the fact that Mrs. Wicks herself was suddenly white with terror, a circumstance leading Maisie to the further knowledge that this lady was still more scared on her own behalf than on that of her pupil. A governess who had only one frock was not likely to have either two fathers or two mothers. Accordingly, if even with these resources, Maisie was to be in the streets, wherein the name of all that was dreadful was poor Mrs. Wicks to be. She had had, it appear, a tremendous brush with ida, which had begun and ended with the request that she would be pleased on the spot to—bundle. It had come suddenly, but completely, this signal of which she had gone in fear. The companions confessed to each other the dread each had hidden the worst of, but Mrs. Wicks was better off than Maisie in having a plan of defense. She declined indeed to communicate it till it was quite mature. But meanwhile she hastened to declare, her feet were firm in the school room. They could only be loosened by force. She would leave for the police, perhaps, but she wouldn't leave for mere outrage. That would be to play her ladyship's game, and it would take another turn of the screw to make her dessert her darling. Her ladyship had come down with extraordinary violence. It had been one of many symptoms of a situation strained between them all, as Mrs. Wicks said, but especially between the two, to the point of God only knew what. Her description of the crisis made the child blanch. Between which two? Papa and Mama? Dear no! I mean between your mother and him. Maisie in this recognized an opportunity to be really deep. Him? Mr. Perriam? She fairly brought a blush to the scared face. Well, my dear, I must say what you don't know ain't worth mentioning, that it won't go on forever with Mr. Perriam since I must meet you. You can suppose? But I meant dear Sir Claude. Maisie stood corrected rather than abashed. I see. But it's about Mr. Perriam. He's angry. Mrs. Wicks waited. He says he's not. Not angry. He's told you so. Mrs. Wicks looked at her hard. Not about him. Then about someone else. Mrs. Wicks looked at her harder. About someone else. Lord Eric? The child promptly brought forth. At this, of a sudden, her governess was more agitated. Oh, why little unfortunate, should we discuss their dreadful names! And she threw herself for the millionth time on Maisie's neck. It took her pupil but a moment to feel that she quivered within security, and, the contact of her terror aiding, the pair in another instant were sobbing in each other's arms. Then it was that, completely relaxed, demoralized as she had never been, Mrs. Wicks suffered her wound to bleed and her resentment to gush. Her great bitterness was that Ida had called her false, denounced her hypocrisy and duplicity, reviled her spying and tattling, her lying and groveling to Sir Claude. Me! ME! the poor woman wailed. Who've seen what I've seen and gone through everything, only to cover her up and ease her off and smooth her down. If I've been an hypocrite, it's the other way round. I've pretended to him and to her, to myself and to you and to everyone not to see. It serves me right to have held my tongue before such horrors. What horrors they were, her companion forebore to you closely to inquire, showing even signs not a few of an ability to take them for granted. That put the couple more than ever, in this troubled sea, in the same boat. So that, with the consciousness of ideas on the part of her fellow mariner, Maisie could sit close and wait. Sir Claude on the morrow came into tea, and then the ideas were produced. It was extraordinary how the child's presence drew out their full strength. The principal one was startling, but Maisie appreciated the courage which with her governess handled it. It simply consisted of the proposal that whenever and wherever they should seek refuge, Sir Claude should consent to share their asylum. On his protesting with all the warmth and nature against this note of secession, she asked what else in the world was left to them if her ladyship should stop supplies. Supplies be hanged, my dear woman, said their delightful friend. Leave supplies to me, I'll take care of supplies. Mrs. Wicks rose to it. Well, it's exactly because I knew you'd be so glad to do so that I put the question before you. There's a way to look after us better than any other. The way's just to come along with us. It hung before Maisie, Mrs. Wicks's way, like a glittering picture, and she clasped her hands in ecstasy. Come along! Come along! Come along! Sir Claude looked from his step-daughter back to her governess. Do you mean leave this house and take up my abode with you? It'll be the right thing, if you feel as you've told me you feel. Mrs. Wicks, sustained and uplifted, was now as clear as a bell. Sir Claude had the air of trying to recall what he had told her. Then the light broke that was always breaking to make his face more pleasant. It's your happy thought that I shall take a house for you. For the wretched homeless child, any roof over our heads will do for us, but of course for you'll have to be something really nice. Sir Claude's eyes reverted to Maisie, rather hard as she thought, and there was a shade in his very smile that seemed to show her, though she also felt it didn't show Mrs. Wicks, that the accommodation prescribed must loom to him pretty large. The next moment, however, he laughed gaily enough. My dear lady, you exaggerate tremendously my poor little needs. Mrs. Wicks had once mentioned to her young friend that when Sir Claude called her his dear lady, he could do anything with her. And Maisie felt a certain anxiety to see what he would do now. While he only addressed her a remark of which the child herself was aware of feeling the force. Your plan appeals to me immensely, but of course, don't you see, I shall have to consider the position I put myself in by leaving my wife. You'll also have to remember, Mrs. Wicks replied, that if you don't look out, or a wife won't give you time to consider, her ladyship will leave you. Ah! my good friend, I do look out! The young man returned while Maisie helped herself afresh to bread and butter. Of course, if that happens, I shall have somehow to turn round, but I hope with all my heart it won't. I beg your pardon," he continued to his stepdaughter, for appearing to discuss that sort of possibility under your sharp little nose. But the fact is, I forget half the time that I'd as your sainted mother. So do I," said Maisie, her mouth full of bread and butter, and to put him more in the right. Her protectress at this was upon her again. The little desolate precious pet! For the rest of the conversation she was enclosed in Mrs. Wicks's arms, and as they sat there interlocked Sir Claude, before them with his teacup, looked down at them in deepening thought, shrink together as they might, they couldn't help, Maisie felt, being a very large, lumpish image of what Mrs. Wicks required of his slim fineness. She knew moreover that this lady didn't make it better by adding in a moment. Of course we shouldn't dream of a whole house. Any sort of little lodging, however humble, would be only too blessed. But it would have to be something that would hold us all, said Sir Claude. Oh yes! Mrs. Wicks concurred. The whole points are being together. While you are waiting, before you act, for her ladyship to take some step, our position here will come to an impossible pass. You don't know what I went through with her for you yesterday, and for our poor darling. But it's not a thing I can promise you often to face again. She cast me out in horrible language. She has instructed the servants not to wait on me. Oh! the poor servants are all right! Sir Claude eagerly cried. They're certainly better than their mistress. It's too dreadful that I should sit here and save your wife, Sir Claude, and of Maisie's own mother, that she's lower than a domestic. But my being betrayed into such remarks is just a reason more for our getting away. I shall stay till I'm taken by the shoulders, but that may happen any day. What also may perfectly happen, you must permit me to repeat, is that she'll go off to get rid of us. Oh! if she'll only do that! Sir Claude laughed. That would be the very making of us. Don't say it! Don't say it! Mrs. Wicks pleaded. Don't speak of anything so fatal! You know what I mean. We must all cling to the right. You mustn't be bad. Sir Claude set down his teacup. He had become more grave, and he pensively wiped his moustache. Won't all the world say I'm awful if I leave the house before—before she is bolted? They'll say it was my doing so that made her bolt. Maisie could grasp the force of this reasoning, but it offered no check to Mrs. Wicks. Why need you mind that, if you've done it for so high a motive? Think of the beauty of it! The good lady pressed. Of bolting with you! Sir Claude ejaculated. She faintly smiled. She even faintly coloured. So far from doing you harm it will do you the highest good. Sir Claude, if you'll listen to me, it will save you. Save me from what? Maisie, at this question, waited with renewed suspense for an answer that would bring the thing to some finer point than their companion had brought it to before. But there was, on the contrary, only more mystification in Mrs. Wicks's reply. Ah, from you know what! Do you mean from some other woman? Yes, from a real bad one. Sir Claude, at least the child could see, was not mystified, so little indeed that a smile of intelligence broke afresh in his eyes. He turned them in vague discomfort to Maisie, and then something in the way she met them caused him to chuck her playfully under the chin. It was not till after this that he could naturally met Mrs. Wicks. You think me much worse than I am. If that were true, she returned, I wouldn't appeal to you. I do, Sir Claude, in the name of all that's good in you, and oh, so earnestly, we can help each other. What you'll do for our young friend here, I needn't say. That isn't even what I want you to speak of now. What I want to speak of is what you'll get. Don't you see? From such an opportunity to take hold. Take hold of us. Take hold of her. Make her your duty. Make her your life. She'll repay you a thousandfold. It was to Mrs. Wicks, during this appeal, that Maisie's contemplation transferred itself. Partly because, though her heart was in her throat for trepidation, her delicacy deterred her from appearing herself to press the question. Partly from the coercion of seeing Mrs. Wicks come out as Mrs. Wicks had never come before, not even on the day of her call at Mrs. Beals with the news of Mama's marriage. On that day Mrs. Beal had surpassed her in dignity, but nobody could have surpassed her now. There was, in fact, at this moment a fascination for her pupil and the hint she seemed to give, that she had still more of that surprise behind. So the sharpened sense of spectatorship was the child's main support, the long habit, from the first, of seeing herself in discussion and finding in the fury of it. She had had a glimpse of the game of football, a sort of compensation for the doom of a peculiar passivity. It gave her often an odd air of being present at her history, in as separate a manner as if she could only get at experience by flattening her nose against a pane of glass. Such she felt to be the application of her nose while she waited for the effect of Mrs. Wicks's eloquence. Sir Claude, however, didn't keep her long in a position so ungraceful. He sat down and opened his arms to her, as he had done the day he came for her at her father's. And while he held her there, looking at her kindly, but as if their companion had brought the blood a good deal to his face, he said, Dear Mrs. Wicks is magnificent, but she's rather too grand about it. I mean the situation isn't after all quite so desperate or quite so simple. But I give you my word before her, and I give it to her before you, that I'll never, never forsake you. Do you hear that, old fellow? And do you take it in? I'll stick to you through everything." Maisie did take it in, took it with a long tremor of all her little being, and then as, to emphasise it, he drew her closer, she buried her head on his shoulder and cried without sound and without pain. While she was so engaged, she became aware that his own breast was agitated, and gathered from it with rapture that his tears were as silently flowing. Presently she heard a loud sob from Mrs. Wicks. Mrs. Wicks was the only one who made a noise. She was to have made, for some time, none other but this, though within a few days, in conversation with her pupil, she described her intercourse with Ida as little better than the state of being battered. There was as yet nevertheless no attempt to eject her by force, and she recognised that Sir Claude, taking such a stand as never before, had intervened with passion and with success. As Maisie remembered, and remembered wholly without disdain, that he had told her he was afraid of her ladyship, the little girl took this act of resolution as a proof of what, in the spirit of the engagement sealed by all their tears, he was really prepared to do. Mrs. Wicks spoke to her of the pecuniary sacrifice by which she had herself purchased the scant security she enjoyed, and which, if it was a defence against the hand of violence, yet left her exposed to incredible rudeness. Didn't her ladyship find every hour of the day some artful means to humiliate and trample upon her? There was a quarter salary owing her. A great name even Maisie could suspect for a small matter. She should never see it as long as she lived, but keeping quiet about it put her ladyship, thank heaven, a little in one's power. Now that he was doing so much else, she could never have the grossness to apply for it to Sir Claude. He had sent home for schoolroom consumption a huge frosted cake, a wonderful, delectable mountain, with geological strata of jam, which might, with economy, see them through many days of their siege. But it was nonetheless known to Mrs. Wicks that his affairs were more and more involved, and her fellow partaker looked back tenderly, in the light of these involutions, at the expression of face with which she had greeted the proposal that he should set up another establishment. Maisie felt that if their maintenance should hang by a thread, they must still demean themselves with the highest delicacy. What he was doing was simply acting without delay, so far as his embarrassments permitted, on the inspiration of his elder friend. There was at this season a wonderful month of May, as soft as a drop of the wind in a gale that had kept one awake, when he took out his step-daughter with a fresh alacrity, and they rambled the great town in search, as Mrs. Wicks called it, of combined amusement and instruction. They rode on the top of buses, they visited outlying parks, they went to cricket-matches where Maisie fell asleep, they tried a hundred places for the best one to have tea. This was his direct way of rising to Mrs. Wicks's grand lesson, of making his little accepted charge his duty and his life. They dropped under incontrollable impulses into shops that they agreed were too big to look at things that they agreed were too small, and it was during these hours that Mrs. Wicks, alone at home, but a subject of regretful reference as they pulled off their gloves for refreshment, subsequently described herself at least sheltered from the blows her ladyship had achieved such ingenuity in dealing. She again and again repeated that she wouldn't so much of minded having her attainments held up to scorn, and her knowledge of every subject denied, hadn't she been branded as low in character and tone? There was by this time no pretense on the part of any one of denying it to be fortunate that her ladyship habitually left London every Saturday, and was more and more disposed to return late in the week. It was almost equally public that she regarded as a preposterous pose, and indeed as a direct insult to herself, her husband's attitude of staying behind to look after a child for whom the most elaborate provision had been made. If there was a type Ida despised, Sir Claude communicated to Maisie, it was the man who pottered about town of a Sunday, and he also mentioned how often she had declared to him that if he had a grain of spirit he would be ashamed to accept a menial position about Mr. Farage's daughter. It was her ladyship's contention that he was in craven fear of his predecessor, otherwise he would recognize it as an obligation of plain decency to protect his wife against the outrage of that person's bare-faced attempt to swindle her. The swindle was that Mr. Farage put upon her the whole intolerable burden, and even when I pay for you myself, Sir Claude averred to his young friend, she accuses me the more of truckling and groveling. It was Mrs. Wicks's conviction, they both knew, arrived at on independent grounds, that Ida's weekly excursions were feelers for a more considerable absence. If she came back later each week, the week would be sure to arrive when she wouldn't come back at all. This appearance had, of course, much to do with Mrs. Wicks's actual valor. Could they but hold out long enough, the snug little home with Sir Claude would find itself informally established. CHAPTER XIII. This might moreover have been taken to be the sense of a remark made by her stepfather as, one rainy day when the streets were all splash and two umbrellas unsociable and the wanderers had sought shelter in the national gallery. Maisie sat beside him staring rather sightlessly at a roomful of pictures which he had mystified her much by speaking of with a bored sigh as a silly superstition. They represented with patches of gold and cataracts of purple with stiff saints and angular angels, with ugly Madonna's and uglier babies, strange prayers and prostrations, so that she at first took his words for a protest against devotional idolatry, all the more that he had of late often come with her and with Mrs. Wicks to mourning church, a place of worship of Mrs. Wicks's own choosing, where there was nothing of that sort, no halos on heads, but only, during long sermons, beguiling backs of bonnets, and where, as her governess always afterwards observed, he gave the most earnest attention. It presently appeared, however, that his reference was merely to the effectation of admiring such ridiculous works—an admonition that she received from him as submissively as she received everything. What turn it gave to their talk, needn't here be recorded, the transition to the colorless schoolroom and lonely Mrs. Wicks was doubtless an effect of relaxed interest in what was before them. Maisie expressed in her own way the truth that she never went home nowadays without expecting to find the temple of her studies empty and the poor priestess cast out. This conveyed a full appreciation of her peril, and it was in rejoinder that Sir Claude uttered, acknowledging the source of that peril, the reassurance at which I have glanced,—don't be afraid, my dear, I've squared her. It required indeed a supplement when he saw that it left the child momentarily blank. I mean that your mother lets me do what I want, so long as I let her do what she wants. So you are doing what you want? Maisie asked. Rather, Miss Farage. Miss Farage turned it over. And she's doing the same. Up to the hilt. Again she considered. Then please, what may it be? I wouldn't tell you for the whole world. She gazed at a gaunt Madonna after which she broke into a slow smile. Well, I don't care so long as you do let her. Oh, you monster! And Sir Claude's gay vehemence brought him to his feet. Another day in another place, a place in Baker Street where at a hungry hour she had sat down with him to tea and buns, he brought out a question disconnected from previous talk. I say, you know, what do you suppose your father would do? Maisie hadn't longed to cast about or to question his pleasant eyes. If he were really to go with us, he'd make a great complaint. He seemed amused at the terms she employed. Oh, I shouldn't mind a complaint. He talked to everyone about it, said Maisie. Well, I shouldn't mind that, either. Of course not, the child hastened to respond. You've told me you're not afraid of him. The question is, are you? asked Sir Claude. Maisie candidly considered. Then she spoke resolutely. No, not of papa. But of somebody else. Certainly, of lots of people. Of your mother, first and foremost, of course. Dear yes, more of mamma than of— Than of— Than of what? Sir Claude asked as she hesitated for a comparison. She thought over all objects of dread. Then of a wild elephant, she at last declared. And you are too? she reminded him as he laughed. Oh yes, I am too. Again she meditated. Why, then, did you marry her? Just because I was afraid. Even when she loved you? That made her the more alarming. For Maisie herself, though her companion seemed to find it droll, this opened up depths of gravity. More alarming than she is now. Well, in a different way. Fear, unfortunately, is a very big thing, and there's a great variety of kinds. She took this in with complete intelligence. Then I think I've got them all. You—her friend cried. Nonsense! You're thoroughly game. I'm awfully afraid of Mrs. Beal, Maisie objected. He raised his smooth brows. That charming woman! Well, she answered, you can't understand it because you're not in the same state. She had been going on with the luminous butt, when across the table he laid his hand on her arm. I can understand it, he confessed. I am in the same state. Oh, but she likes you so! Maisie promptly pleaded. Sir Claude literally colored. That has something to do with it. Maisie wondered again. Being liked with being afraid? Yes, when it amounts to adoration. Then why aren't you afraid of me? Because with you it amounts to that. He had kept his hand on her arm. Well, what prevents is simply that you're the gentlest spirit on earth. Besides, he pursued, but he came to a pause. Besides? I should be in fear if you were older. There. See, you already make me talk nonsense, the young man added. The question's about your father. Is he likewise afraid of Mrs. Beal? I think not. And yet he loves her, Maisie mused. Oh, no, he doesn't. Not a bit. After which, as his companions stared, Sir Claude apparently felt that he must make this oddity fit with her recollections. There's nothing of that sort now. But Maisie only stared them more. They've changed? Like your mother and me. She wondered how he knew. Then you've seen Mrs. Beal again. He demurred. Oh, no, she is written to me. He presently subjoined. She's not afraid of your father either. No one at all is, really. Then he went on while Maisie's little mind, with its filial spring, too relaxed from of old for a pang at this wand of parental majesty, speculated on the vague relation between Mrs. Beal's courage and the question, for Mrs. Wicks and herself, of a neat lodging with their friend. She wouldn't care a bit if Mr. Farron should make a row. Do you mean about you and me and Mrs. Wicks? Why should she care? It wouldn't hurt her. Sir Claude, with his legs out and his hand diving into his trousers' pocket, threw back his head with a laugh just perceptibly tempered, as she thought, by a sigh. My dear stepchild, you're delightful. Look here, we must pay. You've had five buns. How can you? Maisie demanded, crimson under the eye of the young woman who had stepped to their board. I've had three. Shortly after this, Mrs. Wicks looked so ill that it was to be feared her ladyship had treated her to some unexampled passage. Maisie asked if anything worse than usual had occurred, whereupon the poor woman brought out with infinite gloom. He has been seeing Mrs. Beale. Sir Claude? The child remembered what he had said. Oh no, not seeing her! I beg your pardon. I absolutely know it. Mrs. Wicks was as positive as she was dismal. Maisie nevertheless ventured to challenge her. And how pleased do you know it? She faltered a moment. From herself, I've been to see her. Then, on Maisie's visible surprise, I went yesterday while you were out with him. He has seen her repeatedly. It was not wholly clear to Maisie why Mrs. Wicks should be prostrate at this discovery, but her general consciousness of the way things could be both perpetrated and resented, always eased off for her the strain of the particular mystery. There may be some mistake. He says he hasn't. Mrs. Wicks turned paler, as if this were a still deeper ground for alarm. He says so? He denies that he has seen her? He told me so three days ago. Perhaps she's mistaken, Maisie suggested. Do you mean perhaps she lies? She lies whenever it suits her, I'm very sure. But I know when people lie, and that's what I've always loved in you that you never do. Mrs. Beale didn't yesterday at any rate. He has seen her. Maisie was silent a little. He says not, she then repeated. Perhaps. Perhaps. Once more, she paused. Do you mean perhaps he lies? Gracious goodness, no! Maisie shouted. Mrs. Wicks' bitterness, however, again overflowed. He does. He does, she cried. And it's that, that's just the worst of it. They'll take you. They'll take you, and what in the world will then become of me? She threw herself afresh upon her pupil and wept over her with the inevitable effect of causing the child's own tears to overflow. But Maisie couldn't have told you if she had been crying at the image of their separation, or at that of Sir Claude's untruth. As regards this deviation, it was agreed between them that they were not in a position to bring it home to him. Mrs. Wicks was in dread of doing anything to make him, as she said, worse, and Maisie was sufficiently initiated to be able to reflect that in speaking to her as he had done, he had only wished to be tender of Mrs. Beale. It fell in with all her inclinations to think of him as tender, and she forbore to let him know that the two ladies had, as she would never do, betrayed him. She had not long to keep her secret. For the next day, when she went out with him, he suddenly said in reference to some errand he had first proposed, No, we won't do that. We'll do something else. On this, a few steps from the door, he stopped to handsome and helped her in. Then, following her, he gave the driver over the top an address that she lost. When he was seated beside her, she asked him where they were going. To it, she replied, My dear child, you'll see. She saw while she watched and wondered that they took the direction of the regents' park, but she didn't know why he should make a mystery of that, and it was not till they passed under a pretty arch and drew up at a white house in a terrace, from which the view, she thought, must be lovely. That mystified, she clutched him and broke out, I shall see papa. He looked down at her with a kind smile. No, probably not. I haven't brought you for that. Then whose house is it? It's her father's. They've moved here. She looked about. She had known Mr. Farage in four or five houses, and there was nothing astonishing in this except that it was the nicest place yet. But I shall see Mrs. Beale. It's to see her that I've brought you. She stared, very white, and with her hand on his arm, though they had stopped, kept him sitting in the cab. To leave me, do you mean? He could scarce bring it out. It's not for me to say if you can stay. We must look into it. But if I do, I shall see papa. Oh, some time or other, no doubt. Then Sir Claude went on. Have you really so very great a dread of that? Maisie glanced away over the apron of the cab, gazed a minute at the green expanse of the regents' park, and at this moment, coloring to the roots of her hair, felt the full, hot rush of an emotion more mature than any she had yet known. It consisted of an odd, unexpected shame, had placing in an inferior light to so perfect a gentleman and so charming a person as Sir Claude, so very near a relative as Mr. Farage. She remembered, however, her friends telling her that no one was seriously afraid of her father, and she turned round with a small toss of her head. Oh, I daresay I can manage him. Sir Claude smiled, but she noted that the violence with which she had just changed color had brought into his own face a slight compunctious and embarrassed flush. It was as if he had caught his first glimpse of her sense of responsibility. Neither of them made a movement to get out, and after an instant he said to her, Look here, if you say so we won't after all go in. Ah, but I want to see Mrs. Beale! the tile gently wailed. But what if she does decide to take you? Then you know you'll have to remain. Maisie turned it over. Straight on. And give you up. Well, I don't know quite about giving me up. I mean, as I gave up Mrs. Beale when I last went to Mamaz, I couldn't do without you here for anything like so long a time as that. It struck her as a hundred years since she had seen Mrs. Beale, who was on the other side of the door they were so near, and whom she had not yet taken the jump to clasp in her arms. Oh, I daresay you'll see more of me than you've seen of Mrs. Beale. It isn't in me to be so beautifully discreet," Sir Claude said. But all the same, he continued, I leave the thing, now that we're here, absolutely with you. You must settle it. We'll only go in if you say so. If you don't say so, we'll turn right round and drive away. So in that case Mrs. Beale won't take me. Well, not by any act of ours. And I shall be able to go on with Mamaz," Maisie asked. Oh, I don't say that. She considered. But I thought you had squared her. Sir Claude poked his stick at the splash-board of the cab. Not my dear child to the point she now requires. Then if she turns me out and I don't come here— Sir Claude promptly took her up. What do I offer you, you naturally inquire? My poor chick, that's just what I ask myself. I don't see it, I confess, quite as straight as Mrs. Wicks. His companion gazed a moment at what Mrs. Wicks saw. You mean we can't make a little family? It's very base of me, no doubt, but I can't wholly chuck your mother. Maisie, at this, emitted a lobe of lengthened sigh, a slight sound of reluctant ascent which would certainly have been amusing to an auditor. Then there isn't anything else. I vow I don't quite see what there is. Maisie waited. Her silence seemed to signify that she too had no alternative to suggest. But she made another appeal. If I come here, you'll come to see me. I won't lose sight of you. But how often will you come? As he hung fire, she pressed him. Often and often? Still he faltered. My dear old woman, he began. Then he paused again, going on the next moment with a change of tone. You're too funny. Yes, then, he said, often and often. All right! Maisie jumped out. Mrs. Beale was at home but not in the drawing-room, and when the butler had gone for her the child suddenly broke out. But when I'm here what will Mrs. Wicks do? Ah! you should have thought of that sooner! said her companion, with the first faint note of asperity she had ever heard him sound. Mrs. Beale fairly swooped upon her, and the effect of the whole hour was to show the child how much, how quite formidably indeed, after all, she was loved. This was the more the case as her step-mother, so changed, in the very manner of her mother, that she really struck her as a new acquaintance, somehow recalled more familiarity than Maisie could feel. A rich, strong, expressive affection, in short, pounced upon her in the shape of a handsomer, ampler, older Mrs. Beale. It was like making a fine friend, and they hadn't been a minute together before she felt elated at the way she had met the choice imposed on her, in the cab. There was a whole future in the combination of Mrs. Beale's beauty and Mrs. Beale's hug. She seemed to miss the chance to meet her, but she didn't. There was no connection of Mrs. Beale's beauty and Mrs. Beale's hug. She seemed to Maisie charming to behold, and also to have no connection at all with anybody who had once mended under-clothing, and had meals in the nursery. The child knew one of her father's wives was a woman of fashion, but she had always dimly made a distinction, not applying that epithet without reserve to the other. Beale had since their separation acquired a conspicuous right to it, and Maisie's first flush of response to her present delight colored all her splendor with meanings that this time were sweet. She had told Sir Claude she was afraid of the lady in Regent's Park, but she had confidence enough to break on the spot into the frankest appreciation. Why, aren't you beautiful? Isn't she beautiful, Sir Claude? Isn't she?" The handsomest woman in London simply, Sir Claude gallantly replied, just as sure as you're the best little girl. Well, the handsomest woman in London gave herself up with tender lustrous looks and every demonstration of fondness, to a happiness at last clutched again. It was almost as vivid a bloom in her maturity as in Mama's, and it took her but a short time to give her little friend an impression of positive power—an impression that seemed to begin like a long bright day. This was a perception on Maisie's part that neither Mama, nor Sir Claude, nor Mrs. Wicks, with their immense and so varied respective attractions, had exactly kindled, and that made an immediate difference when the talk, as it promptly did, began to turn to her father. Oh, yes, Mr. Farrent was a complication, but she saw now that he wouldn't be one for his daughter. For Mrs. Biel certainly he was an immense one, she speedily made known how much. But Mrs. Biel from this moment presented herself to Maisie, as a person to whom a great gift had come. A great gift was just for handling complications. Maisie felt how little she made of them when, after she had dropped to Sir Claude some recall of a previous meeting, he made answer, with the sound of consternation and yet an air of relief, that he had denied to their companion their having, since the day he came for her, seen each other till that moment. Mrs. Biel could but vaguely pity it. Why did you do anything so silly? To protect your reputation. From Maisie! Mrs. Biel was much amused. My reputation with Maisie is too good to suffer. But you believed me, you rascal, didn't you?" Sir Claude asked of the child. She looked at him. She smiled. Her reputation did suffer. I discovered you had been here. He was not too chagrined to laugh. The way, my dear, you talk of that sort of thing. How should she talk, Mrs. Biel wanted to know, after all this wretched time with her mother? It was not Mama who told me—Maisie explained—it was only Mrs. Wicks. She was hesitating whether to bring out before Sir Claude the source of Mrs. Wicks's information, but Mrs. Biel, addressing the young man, showed the vanity of scruples. Do you know that preposterous person came to see me a day or two ago, when I told her I had seen you repeatedly? Sir Claude, for once in a way, was disconcerted. The old cat! She never told me. Then you thought I had lied! he demanded of Maisie. She was flurried by the term with which she had qualified her gentle friend, but she took the occasion for one to which she must in every manner lend herself. Oh, I didn't mind, but Mrs. Wicks did. She added with an intention benevolent to her governess. Her intention was not very effective as regards Mrs. Biel. Mrs. Wicks is too idiotic, that lady declared. But to you of all people, Sir Claude asked, what had she to say? Why that, like Mrs. McCauber, whom she must, I think, rather resemble, she will never, never, never desert Miss Farage. Oh, I'll make that all right! Sir Claude cheerfully returned. I'm sure I hope so, my dear man, said Mrs. Biel, while Maisie wondered just how he would proceed. Before she had time to ask, Mrs. Biel continued, That's not all she came to do, if you please, but she'll never guess the rest. Shall I guess it? Maisie quavered. Mrs. Biel was again amused. Why, you're just the person. It must be quite the sort of thing you've heard at your awful mothers. Have you never seen women there crying to her to spare the men they love? Maisie, wondering, tried to remember, but Sir Claude was freshly diverted. Oh, they don't trouble about Ida. Mrs. Wicks cried to you to spare me. She regularly went down on her knees to me. The darling old dear, the young man exclaimed. These words were a joy to Maisie. They made up for his previous description of Mrs. Wicks. And will you spare him? she asked of Mrs. Biel. Her stepmother, seizing her and kissing her again, seemed charmed with a tone of her question. Not an inch of him, I'll pick him to the bone. You mean that he'll really come often? Maisie pressed. Mrs. Biel turned lovely eyes to Sir Claude. That's not for me to say. It's for him. He said nothing at once, however, with his hands in his pockets and vaguely humming a tune, even Maisie could see he was a little nervous. He only walked to the window and looked out at the regents' park. Well, he has promised, Maisie said, but how will papa like it? His being in and out. Ah, that's a question that to be frank with you, my dear, hardly matters. In point of fact, however, Biel greatly enjoys the idea that Sir Claude, too, poor man, has been forced to quarrel with your mother. Sir Claude turned round and spoke gravely and kindly. Don't be afraid, Maisie. You won't lose sight of me. Thank you so much! Maisie was radiant. But what I meant, don't you know, was what papa would say to me. Oh, I've been having that out with him," said Mrs. Biel. He'll behave well enough. You see, the great difficulty is that, though he changes every three days about everything else in the world, he has never changed about your mother. It's a caution the way he hates her. Sir Claude gave a short laugh. It certainly can't beat the way she still hates him. Well—Mrs. Biel went on obligingly—nothing could take the place of that feeling with either of them, and the best way they can think of to show it is for each to leave you as long as possible on the hands of the other. There's nothing, as you've seen for yourself, that makes either so furious. It isn't, asking so little as you do, that you're much of an expense or trouble. It's only that you make each feel so well how nasty the other wants to be. Therefore Biel goes on loathing your mother too much to have any great fury left for anyone else. Besides, you know, I've squared him. Oh, Lord! Sir Claude cried with a louder laugh and turning again to the window. I know how, Maisie was prompt to proclaim, by letting him do what he wants, unconditioned that he lets you also do it. You're too delicious, my own pet!" she was involved in another hug. How in the world have I got on so long without you? I've not been happy, love, said Mrs. Biel with her cheek to the child's. Be happy now! she throbbed with shy tenderness. I think I shall be. You'll save me. As I'm saving Sir Claude, the little girl asked eagerly. Mrs. Biel, a trifle at a loss, appealed to her visitor. Is she really? he showed high amusement at Maisie's question. It's dear Mrs. Wicks's idea, there may be something in it. He makes me his duty, he makes me his life! Maisie set forth to her stepmother. Why, that's what I want to do! Mrs. Biel so anticipated turned pink with astonishment. Well, you can do it together, then he'll have to come. Mrs. Biel by this time had her young friend fairly in her lap, and she smiled up at Sir Claude. Shall we do it together? His laughter had dropped, and for a moment he turned his handsome, serious face not to his hostess, but to his step-daughter. Well, it's rather more decent than some things. Upon my soul, the way things are going, it seems to me the only decency. He had the air of arguing it out to Maisie, of presenting it, through an impulse of conscience, as a connection in which they could honourably see her participate. Though his plea of mere decency might well have appeared to fall below her rosy little vision. If we're not good for you," he exclaimed, I'll be hanged if I know who we shall be good for. Mrs. Biel showed the child an intenser light. I daresay you will save us from one thing and another. Oh, I know what she'll save me from," Sir Claude roundly asserted. They'll be rouse, of course," he went on. Mrs. Biel quickly took him up. Yes, but there'll be nothing, but for you at least, to the rouse your wife makes as it is. I can bear what I suffer. I can't bear what you go through. We're doing a good deal for you, you know, young woman," Sir Claude went on to Maisie with the same gravity. She coloured with a sense of obligation and the eagerness of her desire it should be remarked how little was lost on her. Oh, I know! Then you must keep us all right," this time he laughed. How you talk to her! cried Mrs. Biel. No worse than you," he gaily answered. Handsome is that Handsome does. She returned in the same spirit. You can take off your things," she went on, releasing Maisie. The child on her feet was all emotion. Then I'm just to stop, this way. It will do as well as any other. Sir Claude to-morrow will have your things brought. I'll bring them myself. Upon my word I'll see them packed," Sir Claude promised. Come here and unbutton. He had beckoned his young companion to where he sat, and he helped disengage her from her coverings while Mrs. Biel, from a little distance, smiled at the hand he displayed. There's a step-father for you. I'm bound to say, you know, that he makes up for the want of other people. He makes up for the want of a nurse," Sir Claude laughed. Don't you remember I told you so the very first time? Remember! It was exactly what made me think so well of you. Nothing would induce me," the young man said to Maisie, to tell you what made me think so well of her. Having divested the child, he kissed her gently and gave her a little pat to make her stand off. The pat was accompanied with a vague sigh in which the gravity of a moment before came back. All the same if you hadn't had the fatal gift of beauty. Well, what? Maisie asked, wondering why he paused. It was the first time she had heard of her beauty. Why, we shouldn't all be thinking so well of each other. He isn't speaking of personal loveliness. You've not that vulgar beauty, my dear, at all," Mrs. Biel explained. He's just talking of plain, dull charm of character. Her character is the most extraordinary thing in all the world," Sir Claude stated to Mrs. Biel. Oh, I know all about that sort of thing. She fairly bridled with the knowledge. It gave Maisie somehow a sudden sense of responsibility from which she sought refuge. Well, you've got it too, that sort of thing. You've got the fatal gift. You both really have," she broke out. Beauty of character! My dear boy, we haven't a penny worth," Sir Claude protested. Speak for yourself, sir," leapt lightly for Mrs. Biel. I'm good and I'm clever. What more do you want? For you I'll spare your blushes and not be personal. I'll simply say that you're as handsome as you can stick together. You're both very lovely. You can't get out of it," Maisie felt the need of carrying her point. And it's beautiful to see you side by side. Sir Claude had taken his hat and stick. He stood looking at her a moment. You're a comfort in trouble, but I must go home and pack you. And when will you come back? Tomorrow? Tomorrow?" You see what we're in for," he said to Mrs. Biel. Well, I can bear it if you can. Their companion gazed from one of them to the other, thinking that though she had been happy indeed between Sir Claude and Mrs. Wicks, she should evidently be happier still between Sir Claude and Mrs. Biel. But it was like being perched on a prancing horse, and she made a movement to hold on to something. Then you know, shan't I bid good-bye to Mrs. Wicks? Oh, I'll make it all right with her," said Sir Claude. Maisie considered. And with Mama? Ah, Mama! he sadly laughed. Even for the child this was scarcely ambiguous, but Mrs. Biel endeavored to contribute to its clearness. Your mother will crow. She'll crow. Like the early bird," said Sir Claude as she looked about for a comparison. She'll need no consolation, Mrs. Biel went on, for having Major Father grandly blaspheme. Maisie stared. Will he grandly blaspheme? It was impressive. It might have been out of the Bible, and her question produced a fresh play of caresses in which Sir Claude also engaged. She wondered, meanwhile, who, if Mrs. Wicks was disposed of, would represent in her life the element of geography and anecdote, and she presently summoned the delicacy she felt about asking. Won't there be any one to give me lessons? Mrs. Biel was prepared with a reply that struck her as absolutely magnificent. You shall have such lessons as you'd never had in all your life. You shall go to courses. Courses? Maisie had never heard of such things. At institutions, on subjects. Maisie continued to stare. Subjects? Mrs. Biel was really splendid. All the most important ones, French literature and sacred history, you'll take part in classes with awfully smart children. I'm going to look thoroughly into the whole thing, you know. And Sir Claude, with characteristic kindness, gave her a nod of assurance accompanied by a friendly wink. But Mrs. Biel went much further. My dear child, you shall attend lectures. The horizon was suddenly vast, and Maisie felt herself the smaller for it. All alone? Oh, no! I'll attend them with you! said Sir Claude. They'll teach me a lot, I don't know. So they will me, Mrs. Biel gravely admitted. We'll go with her together. It'll be charming. It's ages, she confessed to Maisie, since I've had any time for study. That's another sweet way in which she'll be emotive to us. Oh, won't the good she'll do us be immense! She broke out uncontrollably to Sir Claude. He weighed it, then he replied, That's certainly our idea. Of this idea Maisie naturally had less of a grasp, but it inspired her with almost equal enthusiasm. If in so bright a prospect there would be nothing to long for, it followed that she wouldn't long for Mrs. Wicks. But her consciousness of her assent to the absence of that fond figure caused a pair of words that it often sounded in her ears to ring in them again. It showed her, in short, what her father had always meant by calling her mother a low sneak, and her mother by calling her father one. She wondered if she herself shouldn't be a low sneak in learning to be so happy without Mrs. Wicks. What would Mrs. Wicks do? Where would Mrs. Wicks go? Before Maisie knew it, and at the door, as Sir Claude was off, these anxieties on her lips grew articulate, and her stepfather had stopped long enough to answer them. Oh, I'll square her!" he cried, and with this he departed. Face to face with Mrs. Biel, Maisie, giving a sigh of relief, looked round at what seemed to her the dawn of a higher order. Then everyone will be squared, she peacefully said, on which her stepmother affectionately bent over her again. CHAPTER XV It was Susan Ashe who came to her with the news. He's downstairs, Miss, and he do look beautiful! In the school room at her father's, which had pretty blue curtains, she had been making out at the piano a lovely little thing, as Mrs. Biel called it, Moonlight Berceuse sent her through the post by Sir Claude, who considered that her musical education had been deplorably neglected, and who, the last months at her mother's, had been on the point of making arrangements for regular lessons. She knew from him familiarly that the real thing, as he said, was shockingly dear, and that anyone else was a waste of money, and she therefore rejoiced the more at the sacrifice represented by this composition, of which the price, five shillings, was marked on the cover, and which was evidently the real thing. She was already on her feet. Mrs. Biel has sent up for me. Oh, no, it's not that, said Susan Ashe. Mrs. Biel has been out this hour. Then Papa. Dear, no, not Papa. You'll do miss all but them wandering heirs. Susan went on. Your Papa never came home at all, she added. Home from where? Maisie responded a little absently and very excitedly. She gave a wild manual brush to her locks. Oh, that miss, I should be very sorry to tell you. I'd rather take away that white thing behind, though I'm blessed if it's my work. Do then, please. I know where Papa was. Maisie impatiently continued. Well, in your place, I wouldn't tell. He was at the club, the chrysanthemum. So? All night long. Why, the flowers shut up at night, you know? cried Susan Ashe. Well, I don't care, the child was at the door. Sir Claude asked for me alone. The same as if he was a duchess. Maisie was aware on her way downstairs that she was now quite as happy as one, and also a moment later, as she hung round his neck, that even such a personage would scarce commit herself more grandly. There was moreover a hint of the duchess in the infinite point with which, as she felt, she exclaimed, And this is what you call coming often. Sir Claude met her delightfully and in the same fine spirit. My dear old man, don't make me a scene. I assure you it's what every woman I look at does. Let us have some fun. It's a lovely day. Clap on something smart and come out with me. Then we'll talk it over quietly. They were on their way five minutes later to Hyde Park, and nothing that even in the good days that her mothers they had ever talked over had more of the sweetness of tranquility than his present prompt explanations. He was at his best in such an office, and with the exception of Mrs. Wicks, the only person she had met in her life who ever explained. With him, however, the act had an authority transcending the wisdom of woman. It all came back—the plans that always failed, all the rewards and bribes that she was perpetually paying for in advance, and perpetually out of pocket by afterwards. The whole great stress to be dealt with introduced her on each occasion afresh to the question of money. Even she herself almost knew how it would have expressed the strength of his empire to say that to shuffle away her sense of being duped, he had only, from under his lovely moustache, to breathe upon it. It was somehow in the nature of plans to be expensive and in the nature of the expensive to be impossible. To be involved was of the essence of everybody's affairs, and also at every particular moment to be more involved than usual. This had been the case with Sir Claude's, with Papa's, with Mama's, with Mrs. Beals, and with Maisie's own, at the particular moment—a moment of several weeks—that had elapsed since our young lady had been re-established at her father's. There wasn't two enduppens for anything or for any one, and that was why there had been no sequel to the classes in French literature with all the smart little girls. It was devilish-awkward, didn't she see? To try, without even the limited capital mentioned, to mix her up with a remote array that glittered before her after this as the children of the rich. She was to feel henceforth as if she were flattening her nose upon the hard window-pane of the sweet shop of knowledge. If the classes, however, that were select, and accordingly the only ones, were impossibly dear, the lectures at the institutions—at least at some of them—were directly addressed to the intelligent poor, and it therefore had to be easier still to produce upon the spot the reason why she had been taken to none. This reason, Sir Claude said, was that she happened to be just going to be, though they had nothing to do with now that in directing their steps to the banks of the Serpentine. Maisie's own park, in the north, had been nearer at hand, but they ruled westward in a handsome because, at the end of the sweet June days, this was the direction taken by every one that any one looked at. They cultivated for an hour, on the row, and by the drive. This opportunity for each observer to amuse, and for one of them, indeed, not a little hilariously, to mystify the other. And before the hour was over, Maisie had elicited, in reply to her sharpest challenge, a further account of her friend's long absence. Why, I've broken my word to you so dreadfully, promising so solemnly and then never coming. Well, my dear, that's a question that, not seeing me day after day, you must have very often put to Mrs. Beale. Oh, yes, the child replied, again and again. And what has she told you? That you're as bad as you're beautiful. Is that what she says? Those very words. Ha! the dear old soul! Sir Claude was much diverted, and his loud, clear laugh was all his explanation. Those were just the words Maisie had heard him last use about Mrs. Wicks. She clung to his hand, which was encased in a pearl-grey glove ornamented with the thick black lines, that, at her mother's, always used to strike her as connected with the way the bestitched fists of the long ladies carried, with the elbows well out, their umbrellas upside down. The mere scent of his grasp and her own covered the ground of loss just as much as the ground of gain. His presence was like an object brought so close to her face that she couldn't see round its edges. He himself, however, remained showman of the spectacle, even after they had passed out of the park, and begun, under the charm of the spot and the seasons, to stroll in Kensington Gardens. What they had left behind them was, as he said, only a pretty bad circus, and through prepossessing gates and over a bridge, they had come in a quarter of an hour, as he also remarked, a hundred miles from London. A great green glade was before them, and hiled trees, and under the shade of these, in the fresh turf, the crooked course of a rural footpath. It's the forest of Arden," Sir Claude had just delightfully observed, and I'm the banished Duke, and your—what was the young woman called—the artless country wench. And there, he went on, is the other girl—what's her name, Rosalind?—and don't you know the fellow who was making up to her? Upon my word, he is making up to her. His allusion was to a couple who, side by side, at the end of the glade, were moving in the same direction as themselves. These distant figures in their slow stroll, which kept them so close together that their heads, drooping a little forward, almost touched, presented the back of a lady who looked tall, who was evidently a very fine woman, and that of a gentleman whose left hand appeared to be past well into her arm, while his right, behind him, made jerky motions with the stick that it grasped. Maisie's fancy responded for an instant to her friend's idea that the sight was idyllic. Then, stopping short, she brought out with all her clearness. Why, Mercy, if it isn't Mamma! Sir Claude paused with a stare. Mamma! But Mamma's at Brussels. Maisie, with her eyes on the lady, wondered, at Brussels? She's gone to play a match. At Billiards? You didn't tell me? Of course I didn't! Sir Claude ejaculated. There's plenty I don't tell you. She went on Wednesday. The couple had added to their distance, but Maisie's eyes more than kept pace with them. Then she has come back. Sir Claude watched the lady. It's much more likely she never went. It's Mamma! the child said with decision. They had stood still, but Sir Claude had made the most of his opportunity, and it happened just at that moment, at the end of the vista, the others halted, and still showing only their backs seemed to stay talking. Right you are, my duck!" he exclaimed at last. It's my own sweet wife. He had spoken with a laugh, but he had changed colour, and Maisie quickly looked away from him. Then who is it with her? Blessed if I know, said Sir Claude. Is it Mr. Perriam? Oh, dear no! Perriam smashed. Smashed? Exposed in the city. But there are quantities of others, Sir Claude smiled. Maisie appeared to count them. She studied the gentleman's back. Then this is Lord Eric. For a moment her companion made no answer, and when she turned her eyes again to him he was looking at her she thought rather queerly. What do you know about Lord Eric? She tried innocently to be odd in return. Oh, I know more than you think. Is it Lord Eric? She repeated. It may be. Blessed if I care. Their friends had slightly separated, and now as Sir Claude spoke suddenly faced round showing all the splendour of her ladyship and all the mystery of her comrade. Maisie held her breath. They're coming. Let them come. And Sir Claude, pulling out his cigarettes, began to strike a light. We shall meet them. No. They'll meet us. Maisie stood her ground. They see us. Just look. Sir Claude threw away his match. Come straight on. The others, in the return evidently startled, had half paused again, keeping well apart. She's horribly surprised and wants to slope, he continued, but it's too late. Maisie advanced beside him, making out even across the interval that her ladyship was ill at ease. Then what will she do? Sir Claude puffed his cigarette. She's quickly thinking. He appeared to enjoy it. Ida had wavered but an instant. Her companion clearly gave her moral support. Maisie thought he somehow looked brave, and he had no likeness whatever to Mr. Perriam. His face, thin and rather sharp, was smooth, and it was not till they came near that she saw he had a remarkably fair little moustache. She could already see that his eyes were of the lightest blue. He was far nicer than Mr. Perriam. Mama looked terrible from afar, but even under her guns the child's curiosity flickered and she appealed again to Sir Claude. Is it? Is it, Lord Eric?" Sir Claude smoked composedly enough. I think it's the Count. This was a happy solution. It fitted her idea of a Count. But on what idea, as she now came grandly on, did Mama fit? Unless that of an actress in some tremendous situation, sweeping down to the footlights as if she would jump them. Maisie felt really so frightened that before she knew it she had passed her hand into Sir Claude's arm. Her pressure caused him to stop, and at the side of this the other couple came equally to a stand, and beyond their diminished space remained a moment more in talk. This, however, was the matter of an instant. Leaving the Count apparently to come round more circuitously, an outflanking movement if Maisie had but known, her ladyship resumed the onset. What will she do now? her daughter asked. Sir Claude was at present in a position to say, Try to pretend it's me. You. Why, that I'm up to something. In another minute poor Ida had justified this prediction, erect there before them like a figure of justice in full dress. There were parts of her face that grew whiter while Maisie looked, and other parts in which this change seemed to make other colours reign with more intensity. What are you doing with my daughter? she demanded of her husband, in spite of the indignant tone of which Maisie had a greater sense than ever in her life before, of not being personally noticed. It seemed to her Sir Claude also grew pale as an effect of the loud defiance with which Ida twice repeated this question. He put her, instead of answering it, to an enquiry of his own. Who the devil have you got hold of now? And at this her ladyship turned tremendously to the child, glaring at her as at an equal plotter of sin. Maisie received in petrification the full force of her mother's huge painted eyes. They were like Japanese lanterns swung under festival arches. But life came back to her from a tone suddenly and strangely softened. Go straight to that gentleman, my dear. I've asked him to take you a few minutes. He's charming. Go. I've something to say to this creature." Maisie felt Sir Claude immediately clutch her. No, no, thank you, that won't do. She's mine. Yours? It was confounding to Maisie to hear her speak quite as if she had never heard of Sir Claude before. Mine. You've given her up. You've not another word to say about her. I have her from her father," said Sir Claude, a statement that startled his companion, who could also measure its lively action on her mother. There was visibly, however, an influence that made Ida consider. She glanced at the gentleman she had left, who, having strolled with his hands and his pockets to some distance, stood there with unembarrassed vagueness. She directed to him the face that was like an illuminated garden, turnstile and all, for the frequentation of which he had his season ticket. Then she looked again at Sir Claude. I've given her up to her father to keep, not to get rid of by sending about the town either with you or with anyone else. If she's not to mind me, let him come and tell me so. I declined to take it from another person, and I like your pretending that with your humbug of interest you've a leg to stand on. I know your game, and have something now to say to you about it." Sir Claude gave a squeeze of the child's arm. Didn't I tell you she'd have, Miss Varenge? You're uncommonly afraid to hear it. Ida went on. But if you think she'll protect you from it, you're mightily mistaken. She gave him a moment. I'll give her the benefit as soon as look at you. Should you like her to know, my dear? Daisy had a sense of her launching the question with effect, yet our young lady was also conscious of hoping that Sir Claude would declare that preference. We have already learned that she had come to like peoples liking her to know. Before he could reply at all, nonetheless, her mother opened a pair of arms of extraordinary elegance, and then she felt the loosening of his grasp. My own child! Ida murmured in a voice, a voice of sudden confused tenderness, that it seemed to her she had heard for the first time. She wavered but an instant, thrilled with the first direct appeal. As distinguished from the mere maternal pull, she had ever had from lips that even in the old vociferous years had always been sharp. The next moment she was on her mother's breast, where, amid a wilderness of trinkets, she felt as if she had suddenly been thrust with a smash of glass into a jeweler's shop front, but only to be as suddenly ejected with a push and the brisk injunction. Now go to the captain! Maisie glanced at the gentleman submissively, but felt the want of more introduction. The captain! Sir Claude broke into a laugh. I told her it was the count. Ida stared. She rose so superior that she was colossal. You're too utterly loathsome! she then declared. Be off! she repeated to her daughter. Maisie started, moved backward, and looking at Sir Claude, only for a moment she signed to him and her bewilderment. But he was too angry to heed her, too angry with his wife, as she turned away she heard his anger break out. You damned old—but she couldn't quite hear all. It was enough. It was too much. She fled before it, rushing even to a stranger for the shock of such a change of tone. Let the captain's light blue eyes the greatest marvel occurred. She felt a sudden relief at finding them reply with anxiety to the horror in her face. What in the world has he done? he put it all on Sir Claude. He has called her a damned old brute. She couldn't help bringing that out. The captain, at the same elevation as her ladyship, gaped wide. Then, of course, like everyone else, he was convulsed. But he instantly caught himself up, echoing her bad words. A damned old brute! your mother! Maisie was already conscious of her second movement. I think she tried to make him angry. The captain's stupefaction was fine. Angry? She? Why, she's an angel. On the spot, as he said this, his face won her over. It was so bright and kind, and his blue eyes had such a reflection of some mysterious grace that for him at least her mother had put forth. Her fund of observation enabled her as she gazed up at him to place him. He was a candid, simple soldier. Very grave—she came back to that—but not at all terrible. At any rate, he struck a note that was new to her, and that after a moment made her say, Do you like her very much? he smiled down at her, hesitating, looking pleasanter and pleasanter. Let me tell you about your mother. He put out a big military hand which she immediately took, and they turned off together to where a couple of chairs had been placed under one of the trees. She told me to come to you," Maisie explained as they went, and presently she was close to him in a chair, with the prettiest of pictures, the sheen of the lake through other trees, before them, and the sound of birds, the plash of boats, the play of children in the air. The captain, inclining his military person, sat sideways to be closer and kinder, and as her hand was on the arm of her seat, he put his own down on it again to emphasize something he had to say that would be good for her to hear. He had already told her how her mother, from the moment of seeing her so unexpectedly with the person who was—well, not at all the right person—had promptly asked him to take charge of her while she herself tackled, as she said, the real culprit. He gave the child the sense of doing for the time what he liked with her. Ten minutes before she had never seen him, but she could now sit there touching him, touched and impressed by him, and thinking it nice when a gentleman was thin and brown. Brown with a kind of clear depth that made his straw-colored mustache almost white, and his eyes resemble little pale flowers. The most extraordinary thing was the way she didn't appear just then to mind Sir Claude's being tackled. The captain wasn't a bit like him, for it was an odd part of the pleasantness of Mama's friend that it resided in a manner in this friend's having a face so informally put together that the only kindness could be to call it funny. An odder part still was that it finally made our young lady, to classify him further, say to herself that, of all people in the world, he reminded her most insidiously of Mrs. Wicks. He had neither straighteners nor a diadem, nor, at least in the same place as the other, a button. He was sunburnt and deep-voiced and smelt of cigars, yet he marvelously had more in common with her old governess than with her young stepfather. What he had to say to her, that was good for her to hear, was that her poor mother, didn't she know, was the best friend he had ever had in all his life, and he added, she has told me ever so much about you, I'm awfully glad to know you. She had never, she thought, been so addressed, as a young lady, not even by Sir Claude, the day, so long ago, that she found him with Mrs. Beale. It struck her as the way that at balls, by delightful partners, young ladies must be spoken to in the intervals of dances, and she tried to think of something that would meet it at the same high point. But this effort flurried her, and all she could produce was, at first, you know, I thought you were Lord Eric. The captain looked vague. Lord Eric! And then Sir Claude thought you were the Count. At this he laughed out, why he's only five-foot high and as red as a lobster. Maisie laughed with a certain elegance in return, the young lady at the ball certainly would, and was on the point, as conscientiously, of pursuing the subject with an agreeable question, but before she could speak her companion challenged her. Who in the world's Lord Eric? Don't you know him? She judged her young lady would say that with light surprise. Do you mean a fat man with his mouth always open? She had to confess that their acquaintance was so limited that she could only describe the bearer of the name as a friend of Mama's, but a light suddenly came to the captain, who quickly spoke as knowing her man. What do you call him's brother? The fellow that owned bubble-ink. Then with all his kindness he contradicted her flat. Oh, dear, no, your mother never knew him. But Mrs. Wick said so, the child risked. Mrs. Wick's? My old governess. This again seemed amusing to the captain. She mixed him up, your old governess. He's an awful beast. Your mother never looked at him. He was as positive as he was friendly, but he dropped for a minute after this into a silence that gave Maisie, confused but ingenious, a chance to redeem the mistake of pretending to know too much by the humility of inviting further correction. And doesn't she know the count? Oh, I dare say, but he's another ass. After which abruptly, with a different look, he put down again on the back of her own hand the hand he had momentarily removed. Maisie even thought he colored a little. I want tremendously to speak to you. You must never believe any harm of your mother. Oh, I assure you, I don't!" cried the child, blushing herself up to her eyes in a sudden surge of deprecation of such a thought. The captain, bending his head, raised her hand to his lips with a benevolence that made her wish her glove had been nicer. Of course you don't when you know how fond she is of you. She's fond of me? Maisie panted. Tremendously, but she thinks you don't like her. You must like her. She has had too much to put up with. Oh yes, I know! She rejoiced that she had never denied it. Of course I've no right to speak of her except as a particular friend, the captain went on, but she's a splendid woman. She has never had any sort of justice. Hasn't she? His companion, to hear the words, felt a thrill altogether new. Perhaps I oughtn't to say it to you, but she has had everything to suffer. Oh yes, you can say it to me! Maisie hastened to profess. The captain was glad. Well, you needn't tell. It's all for you, do you see? Serious and smiling she only wanted to take it from him. It's between you and me. Oh, there are lots of things I've never told. Well, keep this with the rest. I assure you she has had the most infernal time, no matter what anyone says to the contrary. She's the cleverest woman I ever saw in all my life. She's too charming. She had been touched already by his tone, and now she leaned back in her chair and felt something tremble within her. She's tremendous fun. She can do all sorts of things better than I've seen anyone. She has the pluck of fifty, and I know I assure you I do. She has the nerve for a tiger-shoot by Jovide Taker. She is awfully open and generous, don't you know? There are women that are such horrid sneaks. She'll go through anything for anyone she likes." He appeared to watch for a moment the effect on his companion of this emphasis. Then he gave a small sigh that mourned the limits of the speakable. But it was almost with the note of a fresh challenge that he wound up. Look here. She's true. Maisie had so little desire to assert to the contrary that she found herself, in the intensity of her response, throbbing with a joy still less utterable than the essence of the captain's admiration. She was fairly hushed with the sense that he spoke of her mother as she had never heard anyone speak. It came over her as she sat silent that, after all, this admiration and this respect were quite new words, which took a distinction from the fact that nothing in the least resembling them in quality had on any occasion dropped from the lips of her father, of Mrs. Beale, of Sir Claude, or even of Mrs. Wicks. What it appeared to her to come to was that on the subject of her ladyship it was the first real kindness she had heard, so that at the touch of it something strange and deep and pitying surged up within her. A revelation that, practically and so far as she knew, her mother, apart from this, had only been disliked. Mrs. Wicks's original account of Sir Claude's affection seemed as empty now as the chorus in a children's game, and the husband and wife, but a little way off at that moment, were face to face in hatred and with the dreadful name he had called her still in the air. What was it the captain on the other hand had called her? Maisie wanted to hear that again. The tears filled her eyes and rolled down her cheeks, which burned under them with the rush of a consciousness that for her too, five minutes before, the vivid, towering beauty whose assault she waited had been, a moment long, an object of pure dread. She became on the spot indifferent to her usual fear of showing what in children was notoriously most offensive, presented to her companion, soundlessly but hideously, her wet, distorted face. She cried, with a pang, straight at him, cried as she had never cried at any one in all her life. Oh! do you love her?" she brought out with a gulp that was the effect of her trying not to make a noise. It was doubtless another consequence of the thick mist through which she saw him, that in reply to her question the captain gave her such a queer, blurred look. He stammered, yet in his voice there was also the ring of a great, awkward insistence. Of course, I'm tremendously fond of her. I like her better than any woman I ever saw. I don't mind in the least telling you that," he went on, and I should think myself a great beast if I did. Then to show that his position was superlatively clear, he made her with a kindness that even Sir Claude had never surpassed, tremble again as she had trembled at his first outbreak. He called her by her name, and her name drove it home. My dear Maisie, your mother's an angel! It was an almost unbelievable balm. It soothed so her impression of danger and pain. She sank back in her chair. She covered her face with her hands. Oh, mother! Mother, mother! she sobbed. She had an impression that the captain beside her, if more and more friendly, was by no means unembarrassed. In a minute, however, when her eyes were clear, he was erect in front of her, very red and nervously looking about him and whacking his leg with his stick. Say you love her, Mr. Captain! Say it! Say it! she implored. Mr. Captain's blue eyes fixed themselves very hard. Of course I love her. Dammit, you know. At this she also jumped up. She had fished out somehow her pocket handkerchief. So do I, then. I do! I do! I do! she passionately asseverated. Then will you come back to her? Maisie, staring, stopped the tight little plug of her handkerchief on the way to her eyes. She won't have me. Yes, she will. She wants you. Back at the house, with Sir Claude. Again he hung fire. No, not with him, in another place. They stood looking at each other with an intensity unusual as between a captain and a little girl. She won't have me in any place. Oh yes, she will, if I ask her. Maisie's intensity continued. Shall you be there? The captains on the whole did the same. Oh yes, some day. Then you don't mean now? He broke into a quick smile. Will you come now? Go with us for an hour. Maisie considered. She wouldn't have me even now. She could see that he had his idea but that her tone impressed him. That disappointed her a little, though in an instant he rang out again. She will, if I ask her, he repeated. I'll ask her this minute. Maisie, turning at this, looked away to where her mother and her stepfather had stopped. At first among the trees nobody was visible, but the next moment she exclaimed with expression, It's over. Here he comes. The captain watched the approach of her ladyship's husband, who lounged composedly over the grass, making to Maisie with his closed fingers a little movement in the air. I've no desire to avoid him. Well, you mustn't see him, said Maisie. Oh, he's in no hurry himself. Sir Claude had stopped to light another cigarette. She was vague as to the way it was proper he should feel, but she had a sense that the captain's remark was rather a free reflection on it. Oh, he doesn't care, she replied. Doesn't care for what? Doesn't care who you are. He told me so. Go and ask Mama, she added. If you can come with us. Very good. You really want me not to wait for him. Please don't." But Sir Claude was not yet near, and the captain had with his left hand taken hold of her right, which he familiarly sociably swung a little. Only first, she continued, tell me this, are you going to live with Mama? The immemorial note of Murth broke out at her seriousness. One of these days. She wondered wholly unperturbed by his laughter. Then where will Sir Claude be? He'll have left her, of course. Does he really intend to do that? You've every opportunity to ask him. Maisie shook her head with decision. He won't do it, not first. Her first made the captain laugh out again. Oh, he'll be sure to be nasty. But I've said too much to you. Well, you know I'll never tell, said Maisie. No, it's all for yourself. Goodbye. Goodbye. Maisie kept his hand long enough to add. I like you too. And then, supremely, you do love her? My dear child! The captain wanted words. Then don't do it only for just a little. A little? Like all the others? All the others? He stood staring. She pulled away her hand. Do it always? She bounded to meet Sir Claude, and as she left the captain she heard him ring out with a parent gaiety. Oh, I'm in for it! As she joined Sir Claude she noted her mother in the distance move slowly off, and glancing again at the captain, saw him swinging his stick, retreat in the same direction. She had never seen Sir Claude look as he'd looked just then, flushed yet not excited, settled rather in an immovable disgust, and at once very sick and very hard. His conversation with her mother had clearly drawn blood, and the child's old horror came back to her, begetting the instant moral contraction of the days when her parents had looked to her to feed their love of battle. Her greatest fear for the moment, however, was that her friend would see she had been crying. The next she became aware that he had glanced at her, and it presently occurred to her that he didn't even wish to be looked at. At this she quickly removed her gaze, while he said, rather curtly, well, who in the world is the fellow? She felt herself flooded with prudence. Oh, I haven't found out! This sounded as if she meant he ought to have done so himself, but she could only face doggedly the ugliness of seeming disagreeable as she used to face it in the hours when her father, for her blankness, called her a dirty little donkey, and her mother, for her falsity, pushed her out of the room. Then what have you been doing all this time? Oh, I don't know. It was the essence of her method not to be silly by halves. Then didn't the beasts say anything? They had got down by the lake and were walking fast. Well, not very much. He didn't speak of your mother? Oh, yes, a little. Then what I ask you, please, is how? She kept silence, so long that he presently went on. I say you know, don't you hear me? At this she produced, well, I'm afraid I didn't attend to him very much. Sir Claude, smoking rather hard, made no immediate rejoinder, but finally he exclaimed, Then, my dear, with such a chance he were the perfection of a dunce. He was so irritated, or she took him to be, that for the rest of the time they were in the gardens he spoke no other word, and she meanwhile subtly abstained from any attempt to pacify him, that would only lead to more questions. At the gate of the gardens he hailed a four-wheeled cab, and in silence, without meeting her eyes, put her into it, only saying, Give him that, as he tossed half a crown upon the seat. Even when from outside he had closed the door and told the man where to go, he never took her departing look. Nothing of this kind had ever yet happened to them, but it had no power to make her love him less. So she could not only bear it, she felt as she drove away, she could rejoice in it. It brought again the sweet sense of success, that ages before she had had it a crisis, when on the stairs, returning from her father's, she had met a fierce question of her mother's with an imbecility as deep, and had in consequence been dashed by Mrs. Farage almost to the bottom.