Mrs. Wix gave a positive jump; Maisie caught her look of alarm. "'Take' her? You don't mean to go over on purpose?"
Sir Claude said nothing for a moment; after which, "Why shouldn't I leave you here?" he enquired.
Maisie, at this, sprang up. "Oh do, oh do, oh do!" The next moment she was interlaced with Mrs. Wix, and the two, on the hearth-rug, their eyes in each other's eyes, considered the plan with intensity. Then Maisie felt the difference of what they saw in it.
"She can surely go back alone: why should you put yourself out?" Mrs. Wix demanded.
"Oh she's an idiot—she's incapable. If anything should happen to her it would be awkward: it was I who brought her—without her asking. If I turn her away I ought with my own hand to place her again exactly where I found her."
Mrs. Wix's face appealed to Maisie on such folly, and her manner, as directed to their companion, had, to her pupil's surprise, an unprecedented firmness. "Dear Sir Claude, I think you're perverse. Pay her fare and give her a sovereign. She has had an experience that she never dreamed of and that will be an advantage to her through life. If she goes wrong on the way it will be simply because she wants to, and, with her expenses and her remuneration—make it even what you like!—you'll have treated her as handsomely as you always treat every one."
This was a new tone—as new as Mrs. Wix's cap; and it could strike a young person with a sharpened sense for latent meanings as the upshot of a relation that had taken on a new character. It brought out for Maisie how much more even than she had guessed her friends were fighting side by side. At the same time it needed so definite a justification that as Sir Claude now at last did face them she at first supposed him merely resentful of excessive familiarity. She was therefore yet more puzzled to see him show his serene beauty untroubled, as well as an equal interest in a matter quite distinct from any freedom but her ladyship's. "Did my wife come alone?" He could ask even that good-humouredly.
"When she called on me?" Mrs. Wix was red now: his good humour wouldn't keep down her colour, which for a minute glowed there like her ugly honesty. "No—there was some one in the cab." The only attenuation she could think of was after a minute to add: "But they didn't come up."
Sir Claude broke into a laugh—Maisie herself could guess what it was at: while he now walked about, still laughing, and at the fireplace gave a gay kick to a displaced log, she felt more vague about almost everything than about the drollery of such a "they." She in fact could scarce have told you if it was to deepen or to cover the joke that she bethought herself to observe: "Perhaps it was her maid."
Mrs. Wix gave her a look that at any rate deprecated the wrong tone. "It was not her maid."