ck? Never!"

"She'll stay all the same?"

"All the more."

"Then won't Sir Claude go?" Maisie asked.

"Go back--if SHE doesn't?" Mrs. Wix appeared to give this question the
benefit of a minute's thought. "Why should he have come--only to go
back?"

Maisie produced an ingenious solution. "To MAKE her go. To take her."

Mrs. Wix met it without a concession. "If he can make her go so easily,
why should he have let her come?"

Maisie considered. "Oh just to see ME. She has a right."

"Yes--she has a right."

"She's my mother!" Maisie tentatively tittered.

"Yes--she's your mother."

"Besides," Maisie went on, "he didn't let her come. He doesn't like her
coming, and if he doesn't like it--"

Mrs. Wix took her up. "He must lump it--that's what he must do! Your
mother was right about him--I mean your real one. He has no strength.
No--none at all." She seemed more profoundly to muse. "He might have
had some even with HER--I mean with her ladyship. He's just a poor sunk
slave," she asserted with sudden energy.

Maisie wondered again. "A slave?"

"To his passions."

She continued to wonder and even to be impressed; after which she went
on: "But how do you know he'll stay?"

"Because he likes us!"--and Mrs. Wix, with her emphasis of the word,
whirled her charge round again to deal with posterior hooks. She had
positively never shaken her so.

It was as if she quite shook something out of her. "But how will that
help him if we--in spite of his liking!--don't stay?"

"Do you mean if we go off and leave him with her?--" Mrs. Wix put the
question to the back of her pupil's head. "It WON'T help him. It will be
his ruin. He'll have got nothing. He'll have lost everything. It will be
his utter destruction, for he's certain after a while to loathe her."

"Then when he loathes her"--it was astonishing how she caught the
idea--"he'll just come right after us!" Maisie announced.

"Never."

"Never?"

"She'll keep him. She'll hold him for ever."

Maisie doubted. "When he 'loathes' her?"

"That won't matter. She won't loathe HIM. People don't!" Mrs. Wix
brought up.

"Some do. Mamma does," Maisie contended.

"Mamma does NOT!" It was startling--her friend contradicted her flat.
"She loves him--she adores him. A woman knows." Mrs. Wix spoke not only
as if Maisie were not a woman, but as if she would never be one. "_I_
know!" she cried.

"Then why on earth has she left him?"

Mrs. Wix hesitated. "He hates HER.