Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/83

Rh as his hostility to the photograph of Sir Claude quite dropped out of view. This pleasing object found a conspicuous place in the schoolroom, which, in truth, Mr. Farange seldom entered and in which silent admiration formed, during the time I speak of, almost the sole scholastic exercise of Mrs. Beale's pupil.

Maisie was not long in seeing just what her stepmother had meant by the difference she should show as Mrs. Beale. If she was her father's wife she wasn't her own governess; and if her presence had had formerly to be made regular by the theory of a humble function she was now on a footing that dispensed with all theories and was inconsistent with all servitude. That was what she had meant by the removal of the obstacle to a school: her small companion was no longer required at home as—it was Mrs. Beale's own amusing word—a little duenna. The objection to a successor to Miss Overmore remained; it was composed frankly of the fact, of which Mrs. Beale granted the full absurdity, that she was too awfully fond of her stepdaughter to bring herself to see her in vulgar and mercenary hands. The note of this particular danger