"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. It will be his utter destruction, for he's certain after a while to loathe her."

"Then when he loathes her"--it was astonishing how she caught the idea--"he'll just come right after us!" Maisie announced.

"Never."

"Never?"

"She'll keep him. She'll hold him for ever."

Maisie doubted. "When he 'loathes' her?"

"That won't matter. She won't loathe HIM. People don't!" Mrs. Wix brought up.

"Some do. Mamma does," Maisie contended.

"Mamma does NOT!" It was startling--her friend contradicted her flat.

"She loves him--she adores him. A woman knows." Mrs. Wix spoke not only as if Maisie were not a woman, but as if she would never be one. "_I_ know!" she cried.

"Then why on earth has she left him?"

Mrs. Wix hesitated. "He hates HER. Don't stoop so--lift up your hair.

You know how I'm affected toward him," she added with dignity; "but you must also know that I see clear."

Maisie all this time was trying hard to do likewise. "Then if she has left him for that why shouldn't Mrs. Beale leave him?"

"Because she's not such a fool!"

"Not such a fool as mamma?"

"Precisely--if you WILL have it. Does it look like her leaving him?"

Mrs. Wix enquired. She brooded again; then she went on with more intensity: "Do you want to know really and truly why? So that she may be his wretchedness and his punishment."

"His punishment?"--this was more than as yet Maisie could quite accept.

"For what?"

"For everything. That's what will happen: he'll be tied to her for ever.

She won't mind in the least his hating her, and she won't hate him back.

She'll only hate US."

"Us?" the child faintly echoed.

"She'll hate YOU."

"Me? Why, I brought them together!" Maisie resentfully cried.

"You brought them together." There was a completeness in Mrs. Wix's a.s.sent. "Yes; it was a pretty job. Sit down." She began to brush her pupil's hair and, as she took up the ma.s.s of it with some force of hand, went on with a sharp recall: "Your mother adored him at first--it might have lasted. But he began too soon with Mrs. Beale. As you say,"

she pursued with a brisk application of the brush, "you brought them together."

"I brought them together"--Maisie was ready to reaffirm it. She felt none the less for a moment at the bottom of a hole; then she seemed to see a way out. "But I didn't bring mamma together--" She just faltered.

"With all those gentlemen?"--Mrs. Wix pulled her up. "No; it isn't quite so bad as that."

"I only said to the Captain"--Maisie had the quick memory of it--"that I hoped he at least (he was awfully nice!) would love her and keep her."

"And even that wasn't much harm," threw in Mrs. Wix.

"It wasn't much good," Maisie was obliged to recognise. "She can't bear him--not even a mite. She told me at Folkestone."

Mrs. Wix suppressed a gasp; then after a bridling instant during which she might have appeared to deflect with difficulty from her odd consideration of Ida's wrongs: "He was a nice sort of person for her to talk to you about!"

"Oh I LIKE him!" Maisie promptly rejoined; and at this, with an inarticulate sound and an inconsequence still more marked, her companion bent over and dealt her on the cheek a rapid peck which had the apparent intention of a kiss.

"Well, if her ladyship doesn't agree with you, what does it only prove?"

Mrs. Wix demanded in conclusion. "It proves that she's fond of Sir Claude!"

Maisie, in the light of some of the evidence, reflected on that till her hair was finished, but when she at last started up she gave a sign of no very close embrace of it. She grasped at this moment Mrs. Wix's arm. "He must have got his divorce!"

"Since day before yesterday? Don't talk trash."

This was spoken with an impatience which left the child nothing to reply; whereupon she sought her defence in a completely different relation to the fact. "Well, I knew he would come!"

"So did I; but not in twenty-four hours. I gave him a few days!" Mrs.

Wix wailed.

Maisie, whom she had now released, looked at her with interest. "How many did SHE give him?"

Mrs. Wix faced her a moment; then as if with a bewildered sniff: "You had better ask her!" But she had no sooner uttered the words than she caught herself up. "Lord o' mercy, how we talk!"

Maisie felt that however they talked she must see him, but she said nothing more for a time, a time during which she conscientiously finished dressing and Mrs. Wix also kept silence. It was as if they each had almost too much to think of, and even as if the child had the sense that her friend was watching her and seeing if she herself were watched.

At last Mrs. Wix turned to the window and stood--sightlessly, as Maisie could guess--looking away. Then our young lady, before the gla.s.s, gave the supreme shake. "Well, I'm ready. And now to SEE him!"

Mrs. Wix turned round, but as if without having heard her. "It's tremendously grave." There were slow still tears behind the straighteners.

"It is--it is." Maisie spoke as if she were now dressed quite up to the occasion; as if indeed with the last touch she had put on the judgement-cap. "I must see him immediately."

"How can you see him if he doesn't send for you?"

"Why can't I go and find him?"

"Because you don't know where he is."

"Can't I just look in the salon?" That still seemed simple to Maisie.

Mrs. Wix, however, instantly cut it off. "I wouldn't have you look in the salon for all the world!" Then she explained a little: "The salon isn't ours now."

"Ours?"

"Yours and mine. It's theirs."