Chapter 14 - Page 2

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. Beale could but vaguely pity it. "Why did you do anything so
silly?"

"To protect your reputation."

"From Maisie?" Mrs. Beale 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. Beale wanted to know, "after all this
wretched time with her mother?"

"It was not mamma who told me," Maisie explained. "It was only Mrs.
Wix." She was hesitating whether to bring out before Sir Claude the
source of Mrs. Wix's information; but Mrs. Beale, 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 he 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. Wix did," she added
with an intention benevolent to her governess.

Her intention was not very effective as regards Mrs. Beale. "Mrs. Wix is
too idiotic!" that lady declared.

"But to you, of all people," Sir Claude asked, "what had she to say?"

"Why that, like Mrs. Micawber--whom she must, I think, rather
resemble--she will never, never, never desert Miss Farange."

"Oh I'll make that all right!" Sir Claude cheerfully returned.

"I'm sure I hope so, my dear man," said Mrs. Beale, while Maisie
wondered just how he would proceed. Before she had time to ask Mrs.
Beale continued: "That's not all she came to do, if you please. But
you'll never guess the rest."

"Shall _I_ guess it?" Maisie quavered.

Mrs. Beale was again amused. "Why you're just the person! It must be
quite the sort of thing you've heard at your awful mother's. 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. Wix cried to