Beale might have said to him. He
came in and out; he professed, in joke, to take tremendous precautions;
he showed a positive disposition to romp. He chaffed Mrs. Wix till she
was purple with the pleasure of it, and reminded Maisie of the reticence
he expected of her till she set her teeth like an Indian captive. Her
lessons these first days and indeed for long after seemed to be all
about Sir Claude, and yet she never really mentioned to Mrs. Wix that
she was prepared, under his inspiring injunction, to be vainly tortured.
This lady, however, had formulated the position of things with an
acuteness that showed how little she needed to be coached. Her
explanation of everything that seemed not quite pleasant--and if her own
footing was perilous it met that danger as well--that her ladyship was
passionately in love. Maisie accepted this hint with infinite awe and
pressed upon it much when she was at last summoned into the presence of
her mother.
There she encountered matters amid which it seemed really to help to
give her a clue--an almost terrifying strangeness, full, none the less,
after a little, of reverberations of Ida's old fierce and demonstrative
recoveries of possession. They had been some time in the house together,
and this demonstration came late. Preoccupied, however, as Maisie was
with the idea of the sentiment Sir Claude had inspired, and familiar,
in addition, by Mrs. Wix's anecdotes, with the ravages that in general
such a sentiment could produce, she was able to make allowances for her
ladyship's remarkable appearance, her violent splendour, the wonderful
colour of her lips and even the hard stare, the stare of some gorgeous
idol described in a story-book, that had come into her eyes in
consequence of a curious thickening of their already rich circumference.
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