Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/126

112 husband's unfitness for real responsibilities. The day came indeed when her breathless auditors learned from her in bewilderment that what ailed him was that he was, alas! simply not serious. Maisie wept on Mrs. Wix's bosom after hearing that Sir Claude was a butterfly; considering 'moreover that her governess patched it up but ill in coming out at various moments the next few days with the opinion that it was proper to his station to be light and gay. That had been proper to every one's station that she had yet encountered save poor Mrs. Wix's own; and the particular merit of Sir Claude had seemed precisely that he was different from every one. She talked with him, however, as time went on, very freely about her mother; being with him, in this relation, wholly without the fear that had kept her silent before her father—the fear of bearing tales and making bad things worse. He appeared to accept the idea that he had taken her over and made her, as he said, his particular lark; he quite agreed also that he was an awful humbug and an idle beast and a sorry dunce. And he never said a word to her against her mother—he only remained dumb and discouraged in the face