"You see we're not together--not a bit. But I oughtn't to tell you such
things; all the more that you won't really do it--not you. No, old
chap," the young man continued; "there you'll break down. But it won't
matter--we'll rub along. The great thing is that you and I are all
right."
"WE'RE all right!" Maisie echoed devoutly. But the next moment, in the
light of what he had just said, she asked: "How shall I ever leave you?"
It was as if she must somehow take care of him.
His smile did justice to her anxiety. "Oh well, you needn't! It won't
come to that."
"Do you mean that when I do go you'll go with me?"
Sir Claude cast about. "Not exactly 'with' you perhaps; but I shall
never be far off."
"But how do you know where mamma may take you?"
He laughed again. "I don't, I confess!" Then he had an idea, though
something too jocose. "That will be for you to see--that she shan't take
me too far."
"How can I help it?" Maisie enquired in surprise. "Mamma doesn't care
for me," she said very simply. "Not really." Child as she was, her
little long history was in the words; and it was as impossible to
contradict her as if she had been venerable.
Sir Claude's silence was an admission of this, and still more the tone
in which he presently replied: "That won't prevent her from--some time
or other--leaving me with you."
"Then we'll live together?" she eagerly demanded.
"I'm afraid," said Sir Claude, smiling, "that that will be Mrs. Beale's
real chance."
Her eagerness just slightly dropped at this; she remembered Mrs. Wix's
pronouncement that it was all an extraordinary muddle. "To take me
again? Well, can't you come to see me there?"
"Oh I dare say!"
Though there were parts of childhood Maisie had lost she had all
childhood's preference for the particular promise. "Then you WILL
come--you'll come often, won't you?" she insisted; while at the moment
she spoke the door opened for the return of Mrs. Wix. Sir Claude
hereupon, instead of replying, gave her a look which left her silent
and embarrassed.
When he again found privacy convenient, however--which happened to be
long in coming--he took up their conversation very much where it had
dropped. "You see, my dear, if I shall be able to go to you at your
father's it yet isn't at all the same thing for Mrs. Beale to come to
you here." Maisie gave a thoughtful assent to this proposition, though
conscious she could scarcely herself say just where the difference would
lie. She felt how much her stepfather saved her, as he said with his
habitual amusement, the trouble of that. "I shall probably be able to go
to Mrs. Beale's without your mother's knowing it."
Maisie stared with a certain thrill at the dramatic element in this.
"And she couldn't come here without mamma's--" She was unable to
articulate the word for what mamma would do.
"My dear child, Mrs. Wix would tell of it."
"But I thought," Maisie objected, "that Mrs. Wix and you--"
"Are such brothers-in-arms?"--Sir Claude caught her up. "Oh yes, about
everything but Mrs. Beale. And if you should suggest," he went on, "that
we might somehow or other hide her peeping in from Mrs. Wix--"
"Oh, I don't suggest THAT!" Maisie in turn cut him short.
Sir Claude looked as if he could indeed quite see why. "No; it would
really be impossible." There came to her from this glance at what they
might hide the first small glimpse of something in him that she wouldn't
have expected. There had been times when she had had to make the best
of the impression that she was herself deceitful; yet she had never
concealed anything bigger than a thought. Of course she now concealed
this thought of how strange it would be to see HIM hide; and while she
was so actively engaged he continued: "Besides, you know, I'm not afraid
of your father."
"And you are of my mother?"
"Rather, old man!" Sir Claude returned.