Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/143

Rh Mrs. Wix hesitated. "He says he 's not."

"Not angry? He has told you so?"

Mrs. Wix looked at her hard. "Not about him."

"Then about some one else?"

Mrs. Wix looked at her harder. "About some one else."

"Lord Eric?" the child promptly brought forth. At this, of a sudden, her governess was more agitated. "Oh, why, little unfortunate, should we discuss their dreadful names?"—and she threw herself for the millionth time on Maisie's neck. It took her pupil but a moment to feel that she quivered with insecurity, and, the contact of her terror aiding, the pair, in another instant, were sobbing in each other's arms. Then it was that, completely relaxed, demoralized as she had never been, Mrs. Wix suffered her wound to bleed and her resentment to gush. Her great bitterness was that Ida had called her false, denounced her hypocrisy and duplicity, reviled her spying and tattling, her lying and grovelling to Sir Claude. "Me, me!" the poor woman wailed, " who 've seen what I 've seen and gone through everything only to cover