Chapter 12 - Page 2

mamma?"

"Dear no. I mean between your mother and HIM."

Maisie, in this, recognised 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 for
ever 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. Wix waited. "He says he's not."

"Not angry? He has told you so?"

Mrs. Wix looked at her hard. "Not about HIM!"

"Then about some one else?"

Mrs. Wix looked at her harder. "About some one 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 with insecurity, 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, demoralised as she
had never been, Mrs. Wix 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 grovelling 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 'ipocrite
it's the other way round: I've pretended, to him and to her, to myself
and to you and to every one, NOT to see! It serves me right to have held
my tongue before such horrors!"

What horrors they were her companion forbore too closely to enquire,
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
in to 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 with which 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 in nature against
this note of secession she asked what else in the world