Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/341

Rh to her pupil so much as if she knew what she was talking about.

"I dare say," Sir Claude laughed; "but she 's not a bit less deprived than I am!"

"Of the power to get a divorce? It's just your want of the power that makes the scandal of your connection with her. Therefore it's just her want of it that makes that of hers with you. That's all I contend!" Mrs. Wix concluded with an unparalleled neigh of battle. Oh, she did know what she was talking about!

Maisie had meanwhile appealed mutely to Sir Claude, who judged it easier to meet what she did n't say than to meet what Mrs. Wix did. "It's a letter to Mrs. Beale from your father, my dear, written from Spa and making the rupture between them perfectly irrevocable. It lets her know, and not in pretty language, that, as we technically say, he deserts her. It puts an end, forever, to their relations." He ran his eyes over it again, then appeared to make up his mind. "In fact it concerns you, Maisie, so nearly, and refers to you so particularly, that I really think you ought to see the terms in which this new situation is created for you." And he held out the letter.