At the
same time she felt, through encircling arms, her protectress hesitate.
"You do come out with things! But you mean her ladyship doesn't want
any--really?"
"Won't hear of them--simply. But she can't help the one she HAS got."
And with this Sir Claude's eyes rested on the little girl in a way that
seemed to her to mask her mother's attitude with the consciousness of
his own. "She must make the best of her, don't you see? If only for the
look of the thing, don't you know? one wants one's wife to take the
proper line about her child."
"Oh I know what one wants!" Mrs. Beale cried with a competence that
evidently impressed her interlocutor.
"Well, if you keep HIM up--and I dare say you've had worry enough--why
shouldn't I keep Ida? What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the
gander--or the other way round, don't you know? I mean to see the thing
through."
Mrs. Beale, for a minute, still with her eyes on him as he leaned upon
the chimneypiece, appeared to turn this over. "You're just a wonder of
kindness--that's what you are!" she said at last. "A lady's expected
to have natural feelings. But YOUR horrible sex--! Isn't it a horrible
sex, little love?" she demanded with her cheek upon her stepdaughter's.
"Oh I like gentlemen best," Maisie lucidly replied.
The words were taken up merrily. "That's a good one for YOU!" Sir Claude
exclaimed to Mrs. Beale.
"No," said that lady: "I've only to remember the women she sees at her
mother's.
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