"Why, of her being so frightful."
"The Countess? Of course she's frightful!" Mrs. Wix returned. After a
moment she added: "That's why she pays him."
Maisie pondered. "It's the best thing about her then--if she gives him
as much as she gave ME!"
"Well, it's not the best thing about HIM! Or rather perhaps it IS too!"
Mrs. Wix subjoined.
"But she's awful--really and truly," Maisie went on.
Mrs. Wix arrested her. "You needn't go into details!" It was visibly at
variance with this injunction that she yet enquired: "How does that make
it any better?"
"Their living with me? Why for the Countess--and for her whiskers!--he
has put me off on them. I understood him," Maisie profoundly said.
"I hope then he understood you. It's more than I do!" Mrs. Wix admitted.
This was a real challenge to be plainer, and our young lady immediately
became so. "I mean it isn't a crime."
"Why then did Sir Claude steal you away?"
"He didn't steal--he only borrowed me. I knew it wasn't for long,"
Maisie audaciously professed.
"You must allow me to reply to that," cried Mrs. Wix, "that you knew
nothing of the sort, and that you rather basely failed to back me up
last night when you pretended so plump that you did! You hoped in fact,
exactly as much as I did and as in my senseless passion I even hope now,
that this may be the beginning of better things."
Oh yes, Mrs. Wix was indeed, for the first time, sharp; so that there
at last stirred in our heroine the sense not so much of being proved
disingenuous as of being precisely accused of the meanness that had
brought everything down on her through her very desire to shake herself
clear of it. She suddenly felt herself swell with a passion of protest.
"I never, NEVER hoped I wasn't going again to see Mrs. Beale! I didn't,
I didn't, I didn't!" she repeated. Mrs. Wix bounced about with a force
of rejoinder of which she also felt that she must anticipate the
concussion and which, though the good lady was evidently charged to the
brim, hung fire long enough to give time for an aggravation. "She's
beautiful and I love her! I love her and she's beautiful!"
"And I'm hideous and you hate ME?" Mrs. Wix fixed her a moment, then
caught herself up. "I won't embitter you by absolutely accusing you of
that; though, as for my being hideous, it's hardly the first time I've
been told so! I know it so well that even if I haven't whiskers--have
I?--I dare say there are other ways in which the Countess is a Venus to
me! My pretensions must therefore seem to you monstrous--which comes to
the same thing as your not liking me. But do you mean to go so far as to
tell me that you WANT to live with them in their sin?"
"You know what I want, you know what I want!"--Maisie spoke with the
shudder of rising tears.
"Yes, I do; you want me to be as bad as yourself! Well, I won't. There!
Mrs. Beale's as bad as your father!" Mrs. Wix went on.
"She's not!--she's not!" her pupil almost shrieked in retort.
"You mean because Sir Claude at least has beauty and wit and grace? But
he pays just as the Countess pays!" Mrs. Wix, who now rose as she spoke,
fairly revealed a latent cynicism.
It raised Maisie also to her feet; her companion had walked off a few
steps and paused. The two looked at each other as they had never looked,
and Mrs. Wix seemed to flaunt there in her finery. "Then doesn't he pay
YOU too?" her unhappy charge demanded.
At this she bounded in her place. "Oh you incredible little waif!"
She brought it out with a wail of violence; after which, with another
convulsion, she marched straight away.
Maisie dropped back on the bench and burst into sobs.