What Maisie Knew

'Why that's lovely of her!' Maisie cried.

'It's not so lovely, my dear, but that he'll get his divorce.'

Maisie was briefly silent; after which, 'No—he won't get it,' she said. Then she added still more boldly: 'And you won't get yours.'

Mrs. Beale, who was at the dressing-glass, turned round with amusement and surprise. 'How do you know that?'

'Oh I know!' cried Maisie.

'From Mrs. Wix?'

Maisie debated, then after an instant took her cue from Mrs. Beale's absence of anger, which struck her the more as she had felt how much of her courage she needed. 'From Mrs. Wix,' she admitted.

Mrs. Beale, at the glass again, made play with a powder-puff. 'My own sweet, she's mistaken!' was all she said.

There was a certain force in the very amenity of this, but our young lady reflected long enough to remember that it was not the answer Sir Claude himself had made. The recollection nevertheless failed to prevent her saying: 'Do you mean then that he won't come till he has got it?'

Mrs. Beale gave a last touch; she was ready; she stood there in all her elegance. 'I mean, my dear, that it's because he hasn't got it that I left him.'

This opened a view that stretched further than Maisie could reach. She turned away from it, but she spoke before they went out again. 'Do you like Mrs. Wix now?'

'Why, my chick, I was just going to ask you if you think she has come at all to like poor bad me!'

Maisie thought, at this hint; but unsuccessfully. 'I haven't the least idea. But I'll find out.'

'Do!' said Mrs. Beale, rustling out with her in a scented air and as if it would be a very particular favour.

The child tried promptly at bed-time, relieved now of the fear that their visitor would wish to separate her for the night from her attendant. 'Have you held out?' she began as soon as the two doors at the end of the passage were again closed on them.

Mrs. Wix looked hard at the flame of the candle. 'Held out—?'

'Why, she has been making love to you. Has she won you over?'

Mrs. Wix transferred her intensity to her pupil's face. 'Over to what?'

'To her keeping me instead.'

'Instead of Sir Claude?' Mrs. Wix was distinctly gaining time.

'Yes; who else? since it's not instead of you.'

Mrs. Wix coloured at this lucidity. 'Yes, that is what she means.'

'Well, do you like it?' Maisie asked.

She actually had to wait, for oh her friend was embarrassed! 'My opposition to the connexion—theirs—would then naturally to some extent fall. She has treated me to-day as if I weren't after all quite such a worm; not that I don't know very well where she got the pattern of her politeness. But of course,' Mrs. Wix hastened to add, 'I shouldn't like her as the one nearly so well as him.'

''Nearly so well!'' Maisie echoed. 'I should hope indeed not.' She spoke with a firmness under which she was herself the first to quiver. 'I thought you 'adored' him.'

'I do,' Mrs. Wix sturdily allowed.

'Then have you suddenly begun to adore her too?'

Mrs. Wix, instead of directly answering, only blinked in support of her sturdiness. 'My dear, in what a tone you ask that! You're coming out.'

'Why shouldn't I? You've come out. Mrs. Beale has come out. We each have our turn!' And Maisie threw off the most extraordinary little laugh that had ever passed her young lips.

There passed Mrs. Wix's indeed the next moment a sound that more than matched it. 'You're most remarkable!' she neighed.

Her pupil, though wholly without aspirations to pertness, barely faltered. 'I think you've done a great deal to make me so.'

'Very true, I have.' She dropped to humility, as if she recalled her so recent self-arraignment.

'Would you accept her then? That's what I ask,' said Maisie.

'As a substitute?' Mrs. Wix turned it over; she met again the child's eyes. 'She has literally almost fawned upon me.'

'She hasn't fawned upon him. She hasn't even been kind to him.'

Mrs. Wix looked as if she had now an advantage. 'Then do you propose to 'kill' her?'

'You don't answer my question,' Maisie persisted. 'I want to know if you accept her.'

Mrs. Wix continued to hedge. 'I want to know if you do!'

Everything in the child's person, at this, announced that it was easy to know. 'Not for a moment.'

'Not the two now?' Mrs. Wix had caught on; she flushed with it. 'Only him alone?'