"He's there—he's there!" she declared once more as she made, on the child, with an almost invidious tug, a strained undergarment "meet."
"Do you mean he's in the salon?" Maisie asked again.
"He's with her," Mrs. Wix desolately said. "He's with her," she reiterated.
"Do you mean in her own room?" Maisie continued.
She waited an instant. "God knows!"
Maisie wondered a little why, or how, God should know; this, however, delayed but an instant her bringing out: "Well, won't she go back?"
"Go back? Never!"
"She'll stay all the same?"
"All the more."
"Then won't Sir Claude go?" Maisie asked.
"Go back—if she doesn't?" Mrs. Wix appeared to give this question the benefit of a minute's thought. "Why should he have come—only to go back?"
Maisie produced an ingenious solution. "To make her go. To take her."
Mrs. Wix met it without a concession. "If he can make her go so easily, why should he have let her come?"
Maisie considered. "Oh just to see me. She has a right."
"Yes—she has a right."
"She's my mother!" Maisie tentatively tittered.
"Yes—she's your mother."
"Besides," Maisie went on, "he didn't let her come. He doesn't like her coming, and if he doesn't like it—"
Mrs. Wix took her up. "He must lump it—that's what he must do! Your mother was right about him—I mean your real one. He has no strength. No—none at all." She seemed more profoundly to muse. "He might have had some even with her—I mean with her ladyship. He's just a poor sunk slave," she asserted with sudden energy.
Maisie wondered again. "A slave?"
"To his passions."
She continued to wonder and even to be impressed; after which she went on: "But how do you know he'll stay?"
"Because he likes us!"—and Mrs. Wix, with her emphasis of the word, whirled her charge round again to deal with posterior hooks. She had positively never shaken her so.
It was as if she quite shook something out of her. "But how will that help him if we—in spite of his liking!—don't stay?"
"Do you mean if we go off and leave him with her?—" Mrs. Wix put the question to the back of her pupil's head. "It won't help him. It will be his ruin. He'll have got nothing. He'll have lost everything. It will be his utter destruction, for he's certain after a while to loathe her."
"Then when he loathes her"—it was astonishing how she caught the idea—"he'll just come right after us!" Maisie announced.
"Never."
"Never?"
"She'll keep him. She'll hold him for ever."
Maisie doubted. "When he 'loathes' her?"
"That won't matter. She won't loathe him. People don't!" Mrs. Wix brought up.
"Some do. Mamma does," Maisie contended.
"Mamma does not!" It was startling—her friend contradicted her flat. "She loves him—she adores him. A woman knows." Mrs. Wix spoke not only as if Maisie were not a woman, but as if she would never be one. "I know!" she cried.
"Then why on earth has she left him?"
Mrs. Wix hesitated. "He hates her. Don't stoop so—lift up your hair. You know how I'm affected toward him," she added with dignity; "but you must also know that I see clear."
Maisie all this time was trying hard to do likewise. "Then if she has left him for that why shouldn't Mrs. Beale leave him?"
"Because she's not such a fool!"
"Not such a fool as mamma?"
"Precisely—if you will have it. Does it look like her leaving him?" Mrs. Wix enquired. She brooded again; then she went on with more intensity: "Do you want to know really and truly why? So that she may be his wretchedness and his punishment."
"His punishment?"—this was more than as yet Maisie could quite accept. "For what?"
"For everything. That's what will happen: he'll be tied to her for ever. She won't mind in the least his hating her, and she won't hate him back. She'll only hate us."
"Us?" the child faintly echoed.
"She'll hate you."
"Me? Why, I brought them together!" Maisie resentfully cried.
"You brought them together." There was a completeness in Mrs. Wix's assent. "Yes; it was a pretty job. Sit down." She began to brush her pupil's hair and, as she took up the mass of it with some force of hand, went on with a sharp recall: "Your mother adored him at first—it might have lasted. But he began too soon with Mrs. Beale. As you say," she pursued with a brisk application of the brush, "you brought them together."
"I brought them together"—Maisie was ready to reaffirm it. She felt none the less for a moment at the bottom of a hole; then she seemed to see a way out. "But I didn't bring mamma together—" She just faltered.
"With all those gentlemen?"—Mrs. Wix pulled her up. "No; it isn't quite so bad as that."
"I only said to the Captain"—Maisie had the quick memory of it—"that I hoped he at least (he was awfully nice!) would love her and keep her."
"And even that wasn't much harm," threw in Mrs. Wix.
"It wasn't much good," Maisie was obliged to recognise. "She can't bear him—not even a mite. She told me at Folkestone."
Mrs. Wix suppressed a gasp; then after a bridling instant during which she might have
