Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/122

108 When he again found privacy consistent, however—and it 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 is n't at all the same thing for Mrs. Beale to come to you here." Maisie gave a thoughtful assent to this proposition, though conscious that 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 could n'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 hide her presence here from Mrs. Wix—"