ree days during which Sir Claude made hasty merry dashes
into the schoolroom to smooth down the odd situation, to say "She'll
come round, you know; I assure you she'll come round," and a little
even to compensate Maisie for the indignity he had caused her to suffer.
There had never in the child's life been, in all ways, such a delightful
amount of reparation. It came out by his sociable admission that her
ladyship had not known of his visit to her late husband's house and
of his having made that person's daughter a pretext for striking up
an acquaintance with the dreadful creature installed there. Heaven
knew she wanted her child back and had made every plan of her own for
removing her; what she couldn't for the present at least forgive any
one concerned was such an officious underhand way of bringing about the
transfer. Maisie carried more of the weight of this resentment than even
Mrs. Wix's confidential ingenuity could lighten for her, especially as
Sir Claude himself was not at all ingenious, though indeed on the other
hand he was not at all crushed. He was amused and intermittent and at
moments most startling; he impressed on his young companion, with a
frankness that agitated her much more than he seemed to guess, that he
depended on her not letting her mother, when she should see her, get
anything out of her about anything Mrs. Beale might have said to him. He
came in and out; he professed, in joke, to take tremendous precautions;
he showed a positive disposition to romp. He chaffed Mrs. Wix till she
was purple with the pleasure of it, and reminded Maisie of the reticence
he expected of her till she set her teeth like an Indian captive. Her
lessons these first days and indeed for long after seemed to be all
about Sir Claude, and yet she never really mentioned to Mrs. Wix that
she was prepared, under his inspiring injunction, to be vainly tortured.
This lady, however, had formulated the position of things with an
acuteness that showed how little she needed to be coached. Her
explanation of everything that seemed not quite pleasant--and if her own
footing was perilous it met that danger as well--that her ladyship was
passionately in love. Maisie accepted this hint with infinite awe and
pressed upon it much when she was at last summoned into the presence of
her mother.

There she encountered matters amid which it seemed really to help to
give her a clue--an almost terrifying strangeness, full, none the less,
after a