just as the Countess pays!" Mrs. Wix, who now rose as she spoke, fairly revealed a latent cynicism.
It raised Maisie also to her feet; her companion had walked off a few steps and paused. The two looked at each other as they had never looked, and Mrs. Wix seemed to flaunt there in her finery. "Then does n't he pay you too?" her unhappy charge demanded.
At this she bounded in her place. "Oh, you incredible little waif!" She brought it out with a wail of violence; after which, with another convulsion, she marched straight away. Maisie dropped back on the bench and burst into sobs.
XXVI
Nothing so dreadful, of course, could be final or even, for many minutes, provisional: they rushed together again too soon for either to feel that either had kept it up, and though they went home in silence it was with a vivid perception for Maisie that her companion's hand had closed upon her. That hand had shown, altogether, these
