Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/219

knowing that it existed and wondering wistfully what it was. Conspicuously at any rate it had a side that was responsible for Mrs. Beale's sudden emotion and sudden confidence—a demonstration, however, of which the tearfulness was far from deterrent to our heroine's thought of how happy she should be if she could only make an arrangement for herself. Mrs. Beale's own operated, it appeared, with regularity and frequency; for it was almost every day or two that she was able to bring Maisie a message and to take one back. It had been over the vision of what, as she called it, he did for her that she broke down; and this vision was kept in a manner before Maisie by a subsequent increase not only of the gayety, but literally—it seemed not presumptuous to perceive—of the actual virtue of her friend. The friend was herself the first to proclaim it: he had pulled her up immensely—he had quite pulled her round. She had charming, tormenting words about him: he was her good fairy, her hidden spring—above all he was just her conscience. That was what had particularly come out with her startling tears: he had made her, dear man, think ever so much better of herself. It had been thus rather surprisingly revealed