Chapter 21

A good deal of the rest of Ida's visit was devoted to explaining, as it
were, so extraordinary a statement. This explanation was more copious
than any she had yet indulged in, and as the summer twilight gathered
and she kept her child in the garden she was conciliatory to a degree
that let her need to arrange things a little perceptibly peep out. It
was not merely that she explained; she almost conversed; all that was
wanting was that she should have positively chattered a little less. It
was really the occasion of Maisie's life on which her mother was to have
most to say to her. That alone was an implication of generosity and
virtue, and no great stretch was required to make our young lady feel
that she should best meet her and soonest have it over by simply seeming
struck with the propriety of her contention. They sat together while
the parent's gloved hand sometimes rested sociably on the child's and
sometimes gave a corrective pull to a ribbon too meagre or a tress too
thick; and Maisie was conscious of the effort to keep out of her eyes
the wonder with which they were occasionally moved to blink. Oh there
would have been things to blink at if one had let one's self go; and
it was lucky they were alone together, without Sir Claude or Mrs. Wix
or even Mrs. Beale to catch an imprudent glance. Though profuse and
prolonged her ladyship was not exhaustively lucid, and her account of
her situation, so far as it could be called descriptive, was a muddle
of inconsequent things, bruised fruit of an occasion she had rather too
lightly affronted. None of them were really thought out and some were
even not wholly insincere. It was as if she had asked outright what
better proof could have been wanted of her goodness and her greatness
than just this marvellous consent to give up what she had so cherished.
It was as if she had said in so many words: "There have been things
between us--between Sir Claude and me--which I needn't go into, you
little nuisance, because you wouldn't understand them." It suited her
to convey that Maisie had been kept, so far as SHE was concerned or
could imagine, in a holy ignorance and that she must take for granted a
supreme simplicity. She turned this way and that in the predicament she
had sought and from which she could neither retreat with grace nor
emerge with credit: she draped herself in the tatters of her impudence,
postured to her utmost before the last little triangle of cracked glass
to which so many fractures had reduced the polished plate of filial
superstition. If neither Sir Claude nor Mrs. Wix was there this was
perhaps all the more a pity: the scene had a style of its own that would
have qualified it for presentation, especially at such a moment as that
of her letting it