"Ah yes; round to herself, but not round to me."
Oh she couldn't bear to hear him say that! "To you? Don't you really believe how she loves you?"
Sir Claude examined his belief. "Of course I know she's wonderful."
"She's just every bit as fond of you as I am," said Maisie. "She told me so yesterday."
"Ah then," he promptly exclaimed, "she has tried to affect you! I don't love her, don't you see? I do her perfect justice," he pursued, "but I mean I don't love her as I do you, and I'm sure you wouldn't seriously expect it. She's not my daughter—come, old chap! She's not even my mother, though I dare say it would have been better for me if she had been. I'll do for her what I'd do for my mother, but I won't do more." His real excitement broke out in a need to explain and justify himself, though he kept trying to correct and conceal it with laughs and mouthfuls and other vain familiarities. Suddenly he broke off, wiping his moustache with sharp pulls and coming back to Mrs. Beale. "Did she try to talk you over?"
"No—to me she said very little. Very little indeed," Maisie continued.
Sir Claude seemed struck with this. "She was only sweet to Mrs. Wix?"
"As sweet as sugar!" cried Maisie.
He looked amused at her comparison, but he didn't contest it; he uttered on the contrary, in an assenting way, a little inarticulate sound. "I know what she can be. But much good may it have done her! Mrs. Wix won't come 'round.' That's what makes it so fearfully awkward."
Maisie knew it was fearfully awkward; she had known this now, she felt, for some time, and there was something else it more pressingly concerned her to learn. "What is it you meant you came over to ask me?"