Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/279

ful to her for meeting him so much in the right place. She met him literally at the very point where Mrs. Beale was most to be reckoned with, the point of the jealousy that was sharp in that lady and of the need of their keeping it as long as possible obscure to her that poor Mrs. Wix had still a hand. Yes, she met him too in the truth of the matter that, as her stepmother had had no one else to be jealous of, she had made up for so gross a privation by directing the sentiment to a moral influence. Sir Claude appeared absolutely to convey in a wink that a moral influence that could pull a string was after all a moral influence that could have its eyes scratched out; and that, this being the case, there was somebody they couldn't afford to expose before they should see a little better what Mrs. Beale was likely to do. Maisie, true enough, had not to put it into words to rejoin in the coffee-room at luncheon: "What can she do but come to you if papa does take a step that will amount to legal desertion?" Neither had he then, in answer, to articulate anything but the jollity of their having found a table at a window from which, as they partook of cold beef and apollinaris—for he hinted they would have to