Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/330

316 "She doesn't fancy anything nor want anything out of any one. Her cursed cheek, as you call it, is the best thing I 've ever seen in her. I don't care a fig for the beastly way she used me—I forgive it all a thousand times over!" Mrs. Wix raised her voice as she had never raised it; she quite triumphed in her lucidity. "I understand her—I almost admire her!" she proclaimed. She spoke as if this might practically suffice; yet in charity to fainter lights she threw out an explanation. "As I 've said, she was different; upon my word I would n't have known her. She had a glimmering—she had an instinct: they brought her. It was a kind of happy thought, and if you could n't have supposed she would ever have had such a thing, why, of course, I quite agree with you. But she did have it. There!"

Maisie could see that, from what it with liveliness lacked, this demonstration gathered a certain something that might almost have exasperated. But as she had often watched Sir Claude in apprehension of displeasure that did n't come, so now, instead of his saying "Oh, hell!" as her father used, she observed him only to take refuge in a