"They're certainly better than their mistress. It's too dreadful that I
should sit here and say of your wife, Sir Claude, and of Maisie's own
mother, that she's lower than a domestic; but my being betrayed into
such remarks is just a reason the more for our getting away. I shall
stay till I'm taken by the shoulders, but that may happen any day. What
also may perfectly happen, you must permit me to repeat, is that she'll
go off to get rid of us."
"Oh if she'll only do that!" Sir Claude laughed. "That would be the very
making of us!"
"Don't say it--don't say it!" Mrs. Wix pleaded. "Don't speak of anything
so fatal. You know what I mean. We must all cling to the right. You
mustn't be bad."
Sir Claude set down his tea-cup; he had become more grave and he
pensively wiped his moustache. "Won't all the world say I'm awful if I
leave the house before--before she has bolted? They'll say it was my
doing so that made her bolt."
Maisie could grasp the force of this reasoning, but it offered no check
to Mrs. Wix. "Why need you mind that--if you've done it for so high a
motive? Think of the beauty of it," the good lady pressed.
"Of bolting with YOU?" Sir Claude ejaculated.
She faintly smiled--she even faintly coloured. "So far from doing you
harm it will do you the highest good. Sir Claude, if you'll listen to
me, it will save you."
"Save me from what?"
Maisie, at this question, waited with renewed suspense for an answer
that would bring the thing to some finer point than their companion
had brought it to before.
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