While she
was so engaged she became aware that his own breast was agitated, and
gathered from it with rapture that his tears were as silently flowing.
Presently she heard a loud sob from Mrs. Wix--Mrs. Wix was the only one
who made a noise.
She was to have made, for some time, none other but this, though
within a few days, in conversation with her pupil, she described her
intercourse with Ida as little better than the state of being battered.
There was as yet nevertheless no attempt to eject her by force, and she
recognised that Sir Claude, taking such a stand as never before, had
intervened with passion and with success. As Maisie remembered--and
remembered wholly without disdain--that he had told her he was afraid of
her ladyship, the little girl took this act of resolution as a proof of
what, in the spirit of the engagement sealed by all their tears, he was
really prepared to do. Mrs. Wix spoke to her of the pecuniary sacrifice
by which she herself purchased the scant security she enjoyed and which,
if it was a defence against the hand of violence, yet left her exposed
to incredible rudeness. Didn't her ladyship find every hour of the
day some artful means to humiliate and trample upon her? There was a
quarter's salary owing her--a great name, even Maisie could suspect,
for a small matter; she should never see it as long as she lived, but
keeping quiet about it put her ladyship, thank heaven, a little in one's
power. Now that he was doing so much else she could never have the
grossness to apply for it to Sir Claude.
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