ication murmured to Mrs. Beale.

Mrs. Wix at the same instant found another apostrophe. "Isn't it enough
for you, madam, to have brought her to discussing your relations?"

Mrs. Beale left Sir Claude unheeded, but Mrs. Wix could make her flame.
"My relations? What do you know, you hideous creature, about my
relations, and what business on earth have you to speak of them? Leave
the room this instant, you horrible old woman!"

"I think you had better go--you must really catch your boat," Sir Claude
said distressfully to Mrs. Wix. He was out of it now, or wanted to be;
he knew the worst and had accepted it: what now concerned him was to
prevent, to dissipate vulgarities. "Won't you go--won't you just get off
quickly?"

"With the child as quickly as you like. Not without her." Mrs. Wix was
adamant.

"Then why did you lie to me, you fiend?" Mrs. Beale almost yelled. "Why
did you tell me an hour ago that you had given her up?"

"Because I despaired of her--because I thought she had left me." Mrs.
Wix turned to Maisie. "You were WITH them--in their connexion. But now
your eyes are open, and I take you!"

"No you don't!" and Mrs. Beale made, with a great fierce jump, a wild
snatch at her stepdaughter. She caught her by the arm and, completing an
instinctive movement, whirled her round in a further leap to the door,
which had been closed by Sir Claude the instant their voices had risen.
She fell back against it and, even while denouncing and waving off Mrs.
Wix, kept it closed in an incoherence of passion. "You don't take her,
but you bundle yourself: she stays with her own people and she's rid of
you! I never heard anything so monstrous!" Sir Claude had rescued Maisie
and kept hold of her; he held her in front of him, resting his hands
very lightly on her shoulders and facing the loud adversaries. Mrs.
Beale's flush had dropped; she had turned pale with a splendid wrath.
She kept protesting and dismissing Mrs. Wix; she glued her back to the
door to prevent Maisie's flight; she drove out Mrs. Wix by the window or
the chimney. "You're a nice one--'discussing relations'--with your talk
of our 'connexion' and your insults! What in the world's our connexion
but the love of the child who's our duty and our life and who holds us
together as closely as she originally brought us?"

"I know, I know!" Maisie said with a burst of eagerness. "I did bring
you."

The strangest of laughs escaped from Sir Claude. "You did bring us--yo