he people of whom Sir Claude was afraid, and by
that law she had had her due measure of latest apprehension of Mrs.
Beale. What occurred at present, however, was that, whereas this
sympathy appeared vain as for him, the ground of it loomed dimly as a
reason for selfish alarm. That uneasiness had not carried her far before
Mrs. Wix spoke again and with an abruptness so great as almost to seem
irrelevant. "Has it never occurred to you to be jealous of her?"

It never had in the least; yet the words were scarce in the air before
Maisie had jumped at them. She held them well, she looked at them hard;
at last she brought out with an assurance which there was no one, alas,
but herself to admire: "Well, yes--since you ask me." She debated, then
continued: "Lots of times!"

Mrs. Wix glared askance an instant; such approval as her look expressed
was not wholly unqualified. It expressed at any rate something that
presumably had to do with her saying once more: "Yes. He's afraid of
her."

Maisie heard, and it had afresh its effect on her even through the
blur of the attention now required by the possibility of that idea of
jealousy--a possibility created only by her feeling she had thus found
the way to show she was not simple. It struck out of Mrs. Wix that
this lady still believed her moral sense to be interested and feigned;
so what could be such a gage of her sincerity as a peep of the most
restless of the passions? Such a revelation would baffle discouragement,
and discouragement was in fact so baffled that, helped in some degree
by the mere intensity of their need to hope, which also, according to
its nature, sprang from the dark portent of the absent letter, the real
pitch of their morning was reached by the note, not of mutual scrutiny,
but of unprecedented frankness. There were broodings indeed and
silences, and Maisie sank deeper into the vision that for her friend
she was, at the most, superficial, and that also, positively, she was
the more so the more she tried to appear complete. Was the sum of all
knowledge only to know how little in this presence one would ever reach
it? The answer to that question luckily lost itself in the brightness
suffusing the scene as soon as Maisie had thrown out in regard to Mrs.
Beale such a remark as she had never dreamed she should live to make.
"If I thought she was unkind to him--I don't know WHAT I should do!"

Mrs. Wix dropped one of her squints; she even confirmed it by a wild