Chapter 25

Every single thing he had prophesied came so true that it was after all
no more than fair to expect quite as much for what he had as good as
promised. His pledges they could verify to the letter, down to his very
guarantee that a way would be found with Miss Ash. Roused in the summer
dawn and vehemently squeezed by that interesting exile, Maisie fell back
upon her couch with a renewed appreciation of his policy, a memento of
which, when she rose later on to dress, glittered at her from the carpet
in the shape of a sixpence that had overflowed from Susan's pride of
possession. Sixpences really, for the forty-eight hours that followed,
seemed to abound in her life; she fancifully computed the number of them
represented by such a period of "larks." The number was not kept down,
she presently noticed, by any scheme of revenge for Sir Claude's flight
which should take on Mrs. Wix's part the form of a refusal to avail
herself of the facilities he had so bravely ordered. It was in fact
impossible to escape them; it was in the good lady's own phrase
ridiculous to go on foot when you had a carriage prancing at the door.
Everything about them pranced: the very waiters even as they presented
the dishes to which, from a similar sense of the absurdity of
perversity, Mrs. Wix helped herself with a freedom that spoke to Maisie
quite as much of her depletion as of her logic. Her appetite was a sign
to her companion of a great many things and testified no less on the
whole to her general than to her particular condition. She had arrears
of dinner to make up, and it was touching that in a dinnerless state
her moral passion should have burned so clear. She partook largely as
a refuge from depression, and yet the opportunity to partake was just
a mark of the sinister symptoms that depressed her. The affair was
in short a combat, in which the baser element triumphed, between her
refusal to be bought off and her consent to be clothed and fed. It was
not at any rate to be gainsaid that there was comfort for her in the
developments of France; comfort so great as to leave Maisie free to take
with her all the security for granted and brush all the danger aside.
That was the way to carry out in detail Sir Claude's injunction to be
"nice"; that was the way, as well, to look, with her, in a survey of the
pleasures of life abroad, straight over the head of any doubt.

They shrank at last, all doubts, as the weather cleared up: it had an
immense effect on them and became quite as lovely as Sir Claude had
engaged. This seemed to have put him so into the secret of things, and
the joy of the world so waylaid the steps of his friends, that little by
little the spirit of hope filled the air and finally took possession of
the