re; what do you mean? And what do you suppose SHE
meant?"

Mrs. Wix let him for a moment, in silence, understand that the answer
to his question, if he didn't take care, might give him more than he
wanted. It was as if, with this scruple, she measured and adjusted all
she gave him in at last saying: "What she meant was to make me know that
you're definitely free. To have that straight from her was a joy I of
course hadn't hoped for: it made the assurance, and my delight at it, a
thing I could really proceed upon. You already know now certainly I'd
have started even if she hadn't pressed me; you already know what, so
long, we've been looking for and what, as soon as she told me of her
step taken at Folkestone, I recognised with rapture that we HAVE. It's
your freedom that makes me right"--she fairly bristled with her logic.
"But I don't mind telling you that it's her action that makes me happy!"

"Her action?" Sir Claude echoed. "Why, my dear woman, her action is just
a hideous crime. It happens to satisfy our sympathies in a way that's
quite delicious; but that doesn't in the least alter the fact that it's
the most abominable thing ever done. She has chucked our friend here
overboard not a bit less than if she had shoved her shrieking and
pleading, out of that window and down two floors to the paving-stones."

Maisie surveyed serenely the parties to the discussion. "Oh your friend
here, dear Sir Claude, doesn't plead and shriek!"

He looked at her a moment. "Never. Never. That's one, only one, but
charming so far as it goes, of about a hundred things we love her for."
Then he pursued to Mrs. Wix: "What I can't for the life of me make out
is what Ida is REALLY up to, what game she was playing in turning to you
with that cursed cheek after the beastly way she has used you. Where--to
explain her at all--does she fancy she can presently, when we least
expect it, take it out of us?"

"She doesn't fancy anything, nor want anything out of any one. Her
cursed cheek, as you call it, is the best thing I've ever seen in her.
I don't care a fig for the beastly way she used me--I forgive it all a
thousand times over!" Mrs. Wix raised her voice as she had never raised
it; she quite triumphed in her lucidity. "I understand her, I almost
admire her!" she quavered. She spoke as if this might practically
suffice; yet in charity to fainter lights she threw out an explanation.
"As I've said, she was different; upon my word I wouldn't h