ise
of which our young lady had already felt the light brush. She had
received neither a greeting nor a glance, but perhaps this was not more
remarkable than the omission, in respect to Sir Claude, parted with in
London two days before, of any sign of a sense of their reunion. Most
remarkable of all was Mrs. Beale's announcement of the pledge given by
Mrs. Wix and not hitherto revealed to her pupil. Instead of heeding this
witness she went on with acerbity: "It might surely have occurred to you
that something would come up."

Sir Claude looked at his watch. "I had no idea it was so late, nor that
we had been out so long. We weren't hungry. It passed like a flash. What
HAS come up?"

"Oh that she's disgusted," said Mrs. Beale.

"With whom then?"

"With Maisie." Even now she never looked at the child, who stood there
equally associated and disconnected. "For having no moral sense."

"How SHOULD she have?" Sir Claude tried again to shine a little at the
companion of his walk. "How at any rate is it proved by her going out
with me?"

"Don't ask ME; ask that woman. She drivels when she doesn't rage," Mrs.
Beale declared.

"And she leaves the child?"

"She leaves the child," said Mrs. Beale with great emphasis and looking
more than ever over Maisie's head.

In this position suddenly a change came into her face, caused, as the
others could the next thing see, by the reappearance of Mrs. Wix in the
doorway which, on coming in at Sir Claude's heels, Maisie had left
gaping. "I DON'T leave the child--I don't, I don't!" she thundered from
the threshold, advancing upon the opposed three but addressing herself
directly to Maisie. She was girded--positively harnessed--for departure,
arrayed as she had been arrayed on her advent and armed with a small fat
rusty reticule which, almost in the manner of a battle-axe, she
brandished in support of her words. She had clearly come straight from
her room, where Maisie in an instant guessed she had directed the
removal of her minor effects. "I don't leave you till I've given you
another chance. Will you come WITH me?"

Maisie turned to Sir Claude, who struck her as having been removed to a
distance of about a mile. To Mrs. Beale she turned no more than Mrs.
Beale had turned: she felt as if already their difference had been
disclosed. What had come out about that in the scene between the two
women? Enough came out now, at all events, as she put it practically to
her stepfather. "Wi