ery high, so there was something in his
mere motion that laid Mrs. Beale again bare. "Here we are!" he cried
almost from the door, shaking his trophy at them and looking from one to
the other. Then he came straight to Mrs. Wix; he had pulled two papers
out of the envelope and glanced at them again to see which was which. He
thrust one out open to Mrs. Wix. "Read that." She looked at him hard,
as if in fear: it was impossible not to see he was excited. Then she
took the letter, but it was not her face that Maisie watched while she
read. Neither, for that matter, was it this countenance that Sir Claude
scanned: he stood before the fire and, more calmly, now that he had
acted, communed in silence with his stepdaughter.

The silence was in truth quickly broken; Mrs. Wix rose to her feet with
the violence of the sound she emitted. The letter had dropped from her
and lay upon the floor; it had made her turn ghastly white and she was
speechless with the effect of it. "It's too abominable--it's too
unspeakable!" she then cried.

"Isn't it a charming thing?" Sir Claude asked. "It has just arrived,
enclosed in a word of her own. She sends it on to me with the remark
that comment's superfluous. I really think it is. That's all you can
say."

"She oughtn't to pass such a horror about," said Mrs. Wix. "She ought
to put it straight in the fire."

"My dear woman, she's not such a fool! It's much too precious." He had
picked the letter up and he gave it again a glance of complacency which
produced a light in his face. "Such a document"--he considered, then
concluded with a slight drop--"such a document is, in fine, a basis!"

"A basis for what?"

"Well--for proceedings."

"Hers?" Mrs. Wix's voice had become outright the voice of derision. "How
can SHE proceed?"

Sir Claude turned it over. "How can she get rid of him? Well--she IS rid
of him."

"Not legally." Mrs. Wix had never looked to her pupil so much as if she
knew what she was talking about.

"I dare say," Sir Claude laughed; "but she's not a bit less deprived
than I!"

"Of the power to get a divorce? It's just your want of the power that
makes the scandal of your connexion with her. Therefore it's just her
want of it that makes that of hers with you. That's all I contend!" Mrs.
Wix concluded with an unparalleled neigh of battle. Oh she did know what
she was talking about!

Maisie had meanwhile appealed mutely to Sir Claude, who judged it easier
to meet what she d