Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/417

Rh let her come. He doesn't like her coming; and if he doesn't like it—"

Mrs. Wix took her up. "He must lump it—that's what he must do! Your mother was right about him—I mean your real one. He has no strength. No—none at all." She seemed more profoundly to muse. "He might have had some even with her—I mean with her ladyship. He 's just a poor, sunk slave," she asserted with sudden energy.

Maisie wondered again. "A slave?"

"To his passions."

She continued to wonder and even to be impressed; after which she went on: "But how do you know he 'll stay?"

"Because he likes us!"—and Mrs. Wix, with her emphasis of the word, whirled her charge round again to deal with posterior hooks. She had positively never shaken her so.

It was as if she quite shook something out of her. "But how will that help him if we—in spite of his affection!—don't stay?"

"Do you mean if we go off and leave him with her?"—Mrs. Wix put the question to the back of her pupil's head. "It won't help him. It will be his ruin. He 'll have got nothing. He'll have lost everything.