er had in all
your life. You shall go to courses."

"Courses?" Maisie had never heard of such things.

"At institutions--on subjects."

Maisie continued to stare. "Subjects?"

Mrs. Beale was really splendid. "All the most important ones. French
literature--and sacred history. You'll take part in classes--with
awfully smart children."

"I'm going to look thoroughly into the whole thing, you know." And Sir
Claude, with characteristic kindness, gave her a nod of assurance
accompanied by a friendly wink.

But Mrs. Beale went much further. "My dear child, you shall attend
lectures."

The horizon was suddenly vast and Maisie felt herself the smaller for
it. "All alone?"

"Oh no; I'll attend them with you," said Sir Claude. "They'll teach me
a lot I don't know."

"So they will me," Mrs. Beale gravely admitted. "We'll go with her
together--it will be charming. It's ages," she confessed to Maisie,
"since I've had any time for study. That's another sweet way in which
you'll be a motive to us. Oh won't the good she'll do us be immense?"
she broke out uncontrollably to Sir Claude.

He weighed it; then he replied: "That's certainly our idea."

Of this idea Maisie naturally had less of a grasp, but it inspired her
with almost equal enthusiasm. If in so bright a prospect there would be
nothing to long for it followed that she wouldn't long for Mrs. Wix;
but her consciousness of her assent to the absence of that fond figure
caused a pair of words that had often sounded in her ears to ring in
them again. It showed her in short what her father had always meant by
calling her mother a "low sneak" and her mother by calling her father
one. She wondered if she herself shouldn't be a low sneak in learning to
be so happy without Mrs. Wix. What would Mrs. Wix do?--where would Mrs.
Wix go? Before Maisie knew it, and at the door, as Sir Claude was off,
these anxieties, on her lips, grew articulate and her stepfather had
stopped long enough to answer them. "Oh I'll square her!" he cried; and
with this he departed.

Face to face with Mrs. Beale, Maisie, giving a sigh of relief, looked
round at what seemed to her the dawn of a higher order. "Then EVERY
ONE will be squared!" she peacefully said. On which her stepmother
affectionately bent over her again.

XV

It was Susan Ash who came to her with the news: "He's downstairs, miss,
and he do look beautiful."

In the schoolroom at her father's, which had pretty blue curtains