Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/410

396 —she began as soon as the doors at the end of the passage were again closed on them. Mrs. Wix looked hard at the flame of the candle. "Held out?"

"Why, she has been making love to you. Has she won you over?"

Mrs. Wix transferred the straighteners to her pupil's face. "Over to what?"

"To her keeping me instead."

"Instead of Sir Claude?" Mrs. Wix was distinctly gaining time.

"Yes; who else?—since it's not instead of you."

Mrs. Wix colored at this lucidity. "Yes—that is what she means."

"Well, do you like it?" Maisie asked.

She actually had to wait, for, oh, her friend was embarrassed! "My opposition to the connection—theirs—would then, naturally, to some extent fall. She has treated me to-day with peculiar consideration; not that I don't know very well where she got the pattern of it! But of course," Mrs. Wix hastened to add, "I should n't like her as the one nearly so well as him."

"'Nearly so well'!" Maisie echoed: "I should hope indeed not." She spoke with