indeed was a slight ambiguity,
as papa's being on Mrs. Beale's didn't somehow seem to place him quite
on his daughter's. It sounded, as this young lady thought it over,
very much like puss-in-the-corner, and she could only wonder if the
distribution of parties would lead to a rushing to and fro and a
changing of places. She was in the presence, she felt, of restless
change: wasn't it restless enough that her mother and her stepfather
should already be on different sides? That was the great thing that had
domestically happened. Mrs. Wix, besides, had turned another face: she
had never been exactly gay, but her gravity was now an attitude as
public as a posted placard. She seemed to sit in her new dress and brood
over her lost delicacy, which had become almost as doleful a memory as
that of poor Clara Matilda. "It IS hard for him," she often said to her
companion; and it was surprising how competent on this point Maisie
was conscious of being to agree with her. Hard as it was, however, Sir
Claude had never shown to greater advantage than in the gallant generous
sociable way he carried it off: a way that drew from Mrs. Wix a hundred
expressions of relief at his not having suffered it to embitter him.
It threw him more and more at last into the schoolroom, where he
had plainly begun to recognise that if he was to have the credit of
perverting the innocent child he might also at least have the amusement.
He never came into the place without telling its occupants that they
were the nicest people in the house--a remark which always led them to
say to each other "Mr. Perriam!" as loud as ever compressed lips and
enlarged eyes could make them articulate. He caused Maisie to remember
what she had said to Mrs. Beale about his having the nature of a good
nurse, and, rather more than she intended before Mrs. Wix, to bring the
whole thing out by once remarking to him that none of her good nurses
had smoked quite so much in the nursery. This had no more effect than
it was meant to on his cigarettes: he was always smoking, but always
declaring that it was death to him not to lead a domestic life.

He led one after all in the schoolroom, and there were hours of late
evening, when she had gone to bed, that Maisie knew he sat there talking
with Mrs. Wix of how to meet his difficulties. His consideration for
this unfortunate woman even in the midst of them continued to show him
as the perfect gentleman and lifted the subject of his courtesy