Chapter 24 - Page 2

Exhibition with her father, had not sprung up to reinstate Mr.
Farange--she knew it meant a triumph for Mrs. Beale. The mere present
sight of Sir Claude's face caused her on the spot to drop straight
through her last impression of Mr. Farange a plummet that reached still
deeper down than the security of these days of flight. She had wrapped
that impression in silence--a silence that had parted with half its veil
to cover also, from the hour of Sir Claude's advent, the image of Mr.
Farange's wife. But if the object in Sir Claude's hand revealed itself
as a letter which he held up very high, so there was something in his
mere motion that laid Mrs. Beale again bare. "Here we are!" he cried
almost from the door, shaking his trophy at them and looking from one to
the other. Then he came straight to Mrs. Wix; he had pulled two papers
out of the envelope and glanced at them again to see which was which. He
thrust one out open to Mrs. Wix. "Read that." She looked at him hard,
as if in fear: it was impossible not to see he was excited. Then she
took the letter, but it was not her face that Maisie watched while she
read. Neither, for that matter, was it this countenance that Sir Claude
scanned: he stood before the fire and, more calmly, now that he had
acted, communed in silence with his stepdaughter.

The silence was in truth quickly broken; Mrs. Wix rose to her feet with
the violence of the sound she emitted. The letter had dropped from her
and lay upon the floor; it had made her turn ghastly white and she was
speechless with the effect of it. "It's too abominable--it's too
unspeakable!" she then cried.

"Isn't it a charming thing?" Sir Claude asked. "It has just arrived,
enclosed in a word of her own. She sends it on to me with the remark
that comment's superfluous. I really think it is. That's all you can
say."

"She oughtn't to pass such a horror about," said Mrs. Wix. "She ought
to put it straight in the fire."

"My dear woman, she's not such a fool! It's much too precious." He had
picked the letter up and he gave it again a glance of complacency which
produced a light in his face. "Such a document"--he considered, then
concluded with a slight drop--"such a document is, in fine, a basis!"

"A basis for what?"

"Well--for proceedings."

"Hers?" Mrs. Wix's voice had become outright the voice of derision. "How
can SHE proceed?"

Sir Claude turned it over. "How can she get rid of him? Well--she IS rid
of him."

"Not legally." Mrs. Wix had never looked to her pupil so much as if she
knew what she was talking about.