Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/369

Rh fire long enough to give time for an aggravation. "She's beautiful, and I love her! I love her, and she 's beautiful!"

"And I'm hideous, and you hate me?" Mrs. Wix fixed her a moment, then caught herself up. "I won't embitter you by absolutely accusing you of that; though, as for my being hideous, it's hardly the first time I 've been told so! I know it so well that even if I haven't whiskers—have I?—I dare say there are other ways in which the Countess is a Venus to me! My pretensions must therefore seem to you monstrous—which comes to the same thing as your not liking me. But do you mean to go so far as to tell me that you want to live with them in their sin?"

"You know what I want, you know what I want!" Maisie spoke with the quaver of rising tears.

"Yes, I do; you want me to be as bad as yourself! Well, I won't. There! Mrs. Beale 's as bad as your father!" Mrs. Wix went on.

"She's not—she's not!" her pupil almost shrieked in retort.

"You mean because Sir Claude at least has beauty and wit and grace? But he pays,