Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/333

Rh next instant, however, she more profoundly guessed against whom the discrimination was made. She was therefore left the more surprised at the complete candor with which he embraced the worst. "If she 's bent on decent persons, why has she given her to me? You don't call me a decent person, and I 'll do Ida the justice that she never did. I think I 'm as indecent as any one, and that there 's nothing in my behavior that makes my wife's surrender a bit less ignoble!"

"Don't speak of your behavior," Mrs. Wix cried; "don't say such horrible things: they 're false and they 're wicked and I forbid you! It 's to keep you decent that I 'm here and that I 've done everything I have done: it 's to save you—I won't say from yourself, because in yourself you 're beautiful and good! It 's to save you from the worst person of all; I haven't, after all, come over to be afraid to speak of her! That 's the person in whose place her ladyship wants such a person as even me; and if she thought herself, as she as good as told me, not fit for Maisie's company, it 's not, as you may well suppose, that she may make room for Mrs. Beale!"

Maisie watched his face as it took this