ady, you've given her up for ever, and
you're ours and ours only now, and the sooner she's off the better!"

Maisie had shut her eyes, but at a word of Sir Claude's they opened.
"Let her go!" he said to Mrs. Beale.

"Never, never, never!" cried Mrs. Beale. Maisie felt herself more
compressed.

"Let her go!" Sir Claude more intensely repeated. He was looking at Mrs.
Beale and there was something in his voice. Maisie knew from a loosening
of arms that she had become conscious of what it was; she slowly rose
from the sofa, and the child stood there again dropped and divided.
"You're free--you're free," Sir Claude went on; at which Maisie's back
became aware of a push that vented resentment and that placed her again
in the centre of the room, the cynosure of every eye and not knowing
which way to turn.

She turned with an effort to Mrs. Wix. "I didn't refuse to give you up.
I said I would if HE'D give up--"

"Give up Mrs. Beale?" burst from Mrs. Wix.

"Give up Mrs. Beale. What do you call that but exquisite?" Sir Claude
demanded of all of them, the lady mentioned included; speaking with a
relish as intense now as if some lovely work of art or of nature had
suddenly been set down among them. He was rapidly recovering himself on
this basis of fine appreciation. "She made her condition--with such a
sense of what it should be! She made the only right one."

"The only right one?"--Mrs. Beale returned to the charge. She had taken
a moment before a snub from him, but she was not to be snubbed on this.
"How can you talk such rubbish and how can you back her up in such
impertinence? What in the world have you done to her to make her think
of such stuff?" She stood there in righteous wrath; she flashed her eyes
round the circle. Maisie took them full in her own, knowing that here at
last was the moment she had had most to reckon with. But as regards her
stepdaughter Mrs. Beale subdued herself to a question deeply mild. "HAVE
you made, my own love, any such condition as that?"

Somehow, now that it was there, the great moment was not so bad. What
helped the child was that she knew what she wanted. All her learning and
learning had made her at last learn that; so that if she waited an
instant to reply it was only from the desire to be nice. Bewilderment
had simply gone or at any rate was going fast. Finally she answered.
"Will you give HIM up? Will you?"

"Ah leave her alone--leave her, leave her!" Sir Claude in sudden
suppl