t it. She's not my daughter--come, old chap! She's not even my
mother, though I dare say it would have been better for me if she had
been. I'll do for her what I'd do for my mother, but I won't do more."
His real excitement broke out in a need to explain and justify himself,
though he kept trying to correct and conceal it with laughs and
mouthfuls and other vain familiarities. Suddenly he broke off, wiping
his moustache with sharp pulls and coming back to Mrs. Beale. "Did she
try to talk YOU over?"

"No--to me she said very little. Very little indeed," Maisie continued.

Sir Claude seemed struck with this. "She was only sweet to Mrs. Wix?"

"As sweet as sugar!" cried Maisie.

He looked amused at her comparison, but he didn't contest it; he uttered
on the contrary, in an assenting way, a little inarticulate sound. "I
know what she CAN be. But much good may it have done her! Mrs. Wix won't
COME 'round.' That's what makes it so fearfully awkward."

Maisie knew it was fearfully awkward; she had known this now, she felt,
for some time, and there was something else it more pressingly concerned
her to learn. "What is it you meant you came over to ask me?"

"Well," said Sir Claude, "I was just going to say. Let me tell you it
will surprise you." She had finished breakfast now and she sat back in
her chair again: she waited in silence to hear. He had pushed the things
before him a little way and had his elbows on the table. This time, she
was convinced, she knew what was coming, and once more, for the crash,
as with Mrs. Wix lately in her room, she held her breath and drew
together her eyelids. He was going to say she must give him up. He
looked hard at her again; then he made his effort. "Should you see your
way to let her go?"

She was bewildered. "To let who--?"

"Mrs. Wix simply. I put it at the worst. Should you see your way to
sacrifice her? Of course I know what I'm asking."

Maisie's eyes opened wide again; this was so different from what she had
expected. "And stay with you alone?"

He gave another push to his coffee-cup. "With me and Mrs. Beale. Of
course it would be rather rum; but everything in our whole story is
rather rum, you know. What's more unusual than for any one to be given
up, like you, by her parents?"

"Oh nothing is more unusual than THAT!" Maisie concurred, relieved at
the contact of a proposition as to which concurrence could have
lucidity.

"Of course it would be quite unconventional," S