erything else in the world, he has never
changed about your mother. It's a caution, the way he hates her."

Sir Claude gave a short laugh. "It certainly can't beat the way she
still hates HIM!"

"Well," Mrs. Beale went on obligingly, "nothing can take the place of
that feeling with either of them, and the best way they can think of to
show it is for each to leave you as long as possible on the hands of the
other. There's nothing, as you've seen for yourself, that makes either
so furious. It isn't, asking so little as you do, that you're much of
an expense or a trouble; it's only that you make each feel so well how
nasty the other wants to be. Therefore Beale goes on loathing your
mother too much to have any great fury left for any one else. Besides,
you know, I've squared him."

"Oh Lord!" Sir Claude cried with a louder laugh and turning again to the
window.

"_I_ know how!" Maisie was prompt to proclaim. "By letting him do what
he wants on condition that he lets you also do it."

"You're too delicious, my own pet!"--she was involved in another hug.
"How in the world have I got on so long without you? I've not been
happy, love," said Mrs. Beale with her cheek to the child's.

"Be happy now!"--she throbbed with shy tenderness.

"I think I shall be. You'll save me."

"As I'm saving Sir Claude?" the little girl asked eagerly.

Mrs. Beale, a trifle at a loss, appealed to her visitor, "Is she
really?"

He showed high amusement at Maisie's question. "It's dear Mrs. Wix's
idea. There may be something in it."

"He makes me his duty--he makes me his life," Maisie set forth to her
stepmother.

"Why that's what _I_ want to do!"--Mrs. Beale, so anticipated, turned
pink with astonishment.

"Well, you can do it together. Then he'll HAVE to come!"

Mrs. Beale by this time had her young friend fairly in her lap and she
smiled up at Sir Claude. "Shall we do it together?"

His laughter had dropped, and for a moment he turned his handsome
serious face not to his hostess, but to his stepdaughter. "Well, it's
rather more decent than some things. Upon my soul, the way things are
going, it seems to me the only decency!" He had the air of arguing it
out to Maisie, of presenting it, through an impulse of conscience, as a
connexion in which they could honourably see her participate; though his
plea of mere "decency" might well have appeared to fall below her rosy
little vision. "If we're not good for YOU" he exclaimed, "I'll b