tion." They
were rapid, and it would have been noticed that the shock the beauty
had given them acted, incongruously, as a positive spur to their
preparations for rejoining her. She had none the less, when they
returned to the sitting-room, already descended; the open door of her
room showed it empty and the chambermaid explained. Here again they were
delayed by another sharp thought of Mrs. Wix's. "But what will she live
on meanwhile?"

Maisie stopped short. "Till Sir Claude comes?"

It was nothing to the violence with which her friend had been arrested.
"Who'll pay the bills?"

Maisie thought. "Can't SHE?"

"She? She hasn't a penny."

The child wondered. "But didn't papa--?"

"Leave her a fortune?" Mrs. Wix would have appeared to speak of papa as
dead had she not immediately added: "Why he lives on other women!"

Oh yes, Maisie remembered. "Then can't he send--" She faltered again;
even to herself it sounded queer.

"Some of their money to his wife?" Mrs. Wix pave a laugh still stranger
than the weird suggestion. "I dare say she'd take it!"

They hurried on again; yet again, on the stairs, Maisie pulled up.
"Well, if she had stopped in England--!" she threw out.

Mrs. Wix considered. "And he had come over instead?"

"Yes, as we expected." Maisie launched her speculation. "What then would
she have lived on?"

Mrs. Wix hung fire but an instant. "On other men!" And she marched
downstairs.

XXVIII

Mrs. Beale, at table between the pair, plainly attracted the attention
Mrs. Wix had foretold. No other lady present was nearly so handsome,
nor did the beauty of any other accommodate itself with such art to the
homage it produced. She talked mainly to her other neighbour, and that
left Maisie leisure both to note the manner in which eyes were riveted
and nudges interchanged, and to lose herself in the meanings that, dimly
as yet and disconnectedly, but with a vividness that fed apprehension,
she could begin to read into her stepmother's independent move. Mrs. Wix
had helped her by talking of a game; it was a connexion in which the
move could put on a strategic air. Her notions of diplomacy were thin,
but it was a kind of cold diplomatic shoulder and an elbow of more than
usual point that, temporarily at least, were presented to her by the
averted inclination of Mrs. Beale's head. There was a phrase familiar to
Maisie, so often was it used by this lady to express the idea of one's
getting what one wan