Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/324

310 Mrs. Wix showed a final timidity, which, however, while Sir Claude drummed on the window pane, she presently surmounted. It came to Maisie that in spite of his drumming and of his not turning round he was really so much interested as to leave himself, in a manner, in her hands; which, somehow, suddenly seemed to her a greater proof than he could have given by interfering. "She wants me to have you!" Mrs. Wix rang out.

Maisie answered this bang at Sir Claude. "Then that 's nice for all of us."

Of course it was, his continued silence sufficiently admitted, while Mrs. Wix rose from her chair and, as if to take more of a stand, placed herself, not without majesty, before the fire. The incongruity of her smartness, the circumference of her stiff frock presented her as really more ready for Paris than any of them. She also gazed hard at Sir Claude's back. "Your wife was different from anything she had ever shown me. She recognizes certain proprieties."

"Which?—do you happen to remember?" Sir Claude asked.

Mrs. Wix's reply was prompt. "The importance for Maisie of a gentlewoman—of some one who is not—well, so bad! She