"Are you very sure?"
"I'm almost very."
"Well then risk it. You mustn't make me risk everything."
She was struck with the force of this. "You want to know if I should be happy with them."
"With those two ladies only? No, no, old man: vous n'y êtes pas. So now—there!" Sir Claude laughed.
"Well then what is it?"
The next minute, instead of telling her what it was, he laid his hand across the table on her own and held her as if under the prompting of a thought. "Mrs. Wix would stay with her?"
"Without you? Oh yes—now."
"On account, as you just intimated, of Mrs. Beale's changed manner?"
Maisie, with her sense of responsibility, weighed both Mrs. Beale's changed manner and Mrs. Wix's human weakness. "I think she talked her round."