he broke out, "my
asking you what Mrs. Wix has said to you?"

"Said to me?"

"This day or two--while I was away."

"Do you mean about you and Mrs. Beale?"

Sir Claude, resting on his elbows, fixed his eyes a moment on the white
marble beneath them. "No; I think we had a good deal of that--didn't
we?--before I left you. It seems to me we had it pretty well all out. I
mean about yourself, about your--don't you know?--associating with us,
as I might say, and staying on with us. While you were alone with our
friend what did she say?"

Maisie felt the weight of the question; it kept her silent for a space
during which she looked at Sir Claude, whose eyes remained bent.
"Nothing," she returned at last.

He showed incredulity. "Nothing?"

"Nothing," Maisie repeated; on which an interruption descended in the
form of a tray bearing the preparations for their breakfast. These
preparations were as amusing as everything else; the waiter poured their
coffee from a vessel like a watering-pot and then made it froth with the
curved stream of hot milk that dropped from the height of his raised
arm; but the two looked across at each other through the whole play of
French pleasantness with a gravity that had now ceased to dissemble.
Sir Claude sent the waiter off again for something and then took up her
answer. "Hasn't she tried to affect you?"

Face to face with him thus it seemed to Maisie that she had tried so
little as to be scarce worth mentioning; again therefore an instant she
shut herself up. Presently she found her middle course. "Mrs. Beale
likes her now; and there's one thing I've found out--a great thing.
Mrs. Wix enjoys her being so kind. She was tremendously kind all day
yesterday."

"I see. And what did she do?" Sir Claude asked.

Maisie was now busy with her breakfast, and her companion attacked his
own; so that it was all, in form at least, even more than their old
sociability. "Everything she could think of. She was as nice to her as
you are," the child said. "She talked to her all day."

"And what did she say to her?"

"Oh I don't know." Maisie was a little bewildered with his pressing her
so for knowledge; it didn't fit into the degree of intimacy with Mrs.
Beale that Mrs. Wix had so denounced and that, according to that lady,
had now brought him back in bondage. Wasn't he more aware than his
stepdaughter of what would be done by the person to whom he was bound?
In a moment, however, she added: "She ma