This was a tribute, but it left Maisie balancing for an objection. "How
CAN you when he's married?"
"He isn't--practically. He's free, you know."
"Free to marry?"
"Free, first, to divorce his own fiend."
The benefit that, these last days, she had felt she owed a certain
person left Maisie a moment so ill-prepared for recognising this lurid
label that she hesitated long enough to risk: "Mamma?"
"She isn't your mamma any longer," Mrs. Beale returned. "Sir Claude has
paid her money to cease to be." Then as if remembering how little, to
the child, a pecuniary transaction must represent: "She lets him off
supporting her if he'll let her off supporting you."
Mrs. Beale appeared, however, to have done injustice to her daughter's
financial grasp. "And support me himself?" Maisie asked.
"Take the whole bother and burden of you and never let her hear of you
again. It's a regular signed contract."
"Why that's lovely of her!" Maisie cried.
"It's not so lovely, my dear, but that he'll get his divorce."
Maisie was briefly silent; after which, "No--he won't get it," she said.
Then she added still more boldly: "And you won't get yours."
Mrs. Beale, who was at the dressing-glass, turned round with amusement
and surprise. "How do you know that?"
"Oh I know!" cried Maisie.
"From Mrs. Wix?"
Maisie debated, then after an instant took her cue from Mrs. Beale's
absence of anger, which struck her the more as she had felt how much of
her courage she needed. "From Mrs. Wix," she admitted.
Mrs. Beale, at the glass again, made play with a powder-puff. "My own
sweet, she's mistaken!" was all she said.
There was a certain force in the very amenity of this, but our young
lady reflected long enough to remember that it was not the answer Sir
Claude himself had made. The recollection nevertheless failed to prevent
her saying: "Do you mean then that he won't come till he has got it?"
Mrs. Beale gave a last touch; she was ready; she stood there in all her
elegance. "I mean, my dear, that it's because he HASN'T got it that I
left him."
This opened a view that stretched further than Maisie could reach. She
turned away from it, but she spoke before they went out again. "Do you
like Mrs. Wix now?"
"Why, my chick, I was just going to ask you if you think she has come at
all to like poor bad me!"
Maisie thought, at this hint; but unsuccessfully. "I haven't the least
idea. But I'll find out."
"Do!" said Mrs. Beale, rustling out with her in a scented air and as if
it would be a very particular favour.
The child tried promptly at bed-time, relieved now of the fear that
their visitor would wish to separate her for the night from her
attendant. "Have you held out?" she began as soon as the two doors at
the end of the passage were again closed on them.