most elaborate provision had been made.
If there was a type Ida despised, Sir Claude communicated to Maisie, it
was the man who pottered about town of a Sunday; and he also mentioned
how often she had declared to him that if he had a grain of spirit
he would be ashamed to accept a menial position about Mr. Farange's
daughter. It was her ladyship's contention that he was in craven fear
of his predecessor--otherwise he would recognise it as an obligation of
plain decency to protect his wife against the outrage of that person's
barefaced attempt to swindle her. The swindle was that Mr. Farange
put upon her the whole intolerable burden; "and even when I pay for
you myself," Sir Claude averred to his young friend, "she accuses me
the more of truckling and grovelling." It was Mrs. Wix's conviction,
they both knew, arrived at on independent grounds, that Ida's weekly
excursions were feelers for a more considerable absence. If she came
back later each week the week would be sure to arrive when she wouldn't
come back at all. This appearance had of course much to do with Mrs.
Wix's actual valour. Could they but hold out long enough the snug little
home with Sir Claude would find itself informally established.

XIII

This might moreover have been taken to be the sense of a remark made by
her stepfather as--one rainy day when the streets were all splash and
two umbrellas unsociable and the wanderers had sought shelter in the
National Gallery--Maisie sat beside him staring rather sightlessly at a
roomful of pictures which he had mystified her much by speaking of with
a bored sigh as a "silly superstition." They represented, with patches
of gold and cataracts of purple, with stiff saints and angular angels,
with ugly Madonnas and uglier babies, strange prayers and prostrations;
so that she at first took his words for a protest against devotional
idolatry--all the more that he had of late often come with her and
with Mrs. Wix to morning church, a place of worship of Mrs. Wix's own
choosing, where there was nothing of that sort; no haloes on heads,
but only, during long sermons, beguiling backs of bonnets, and where,
as her governess always afterwards observed, he gave the most earnest
attention. It presently appeared, however, that his reference was merely
to the affectation of admiring such ridiculous works--an admonition that
she received from him as submissively as she received everything. What
turn it gave to their talk