"
"For what?" Maisie asked.
"Why, for their game. I needn't tell you what that is."
The child reflected. "Well then that's all the more reason."
"Reason for what, pray?"
"For their being kind to me."
"And for your keeping in with them?" Beale roared again; it was as if
his spirits rose and rose. "Do you realise, pray, that in saying that
you're a monster?"
She turned it over. "A monster?"
"They've MADE one of you. Upon my honour it's quite awful. It shows
the kind of people they are. Don't you understand," Beale pursued,
"that when they've made you as horrid as they can--as horrid as
themselves--they'll just simply chuck you?"
She had at this a flicker of passion. "They WON'T chuck me!"
"I beg your pardon," her father courteously insisted; "it's my duty to
put it before you. I shouldn't forgive myself if I didn't point out to
you that they'll cease to require you." He spoke as if with an appeal to
her intelligence that she must be ashamed not adequately to meet, and
this gave a real distinction to his superior delicacy.
It cleared the case as he had wished. "Cease to require me because they
won't care?" She paused with that sketch of her idea.
"OF COURSE Sir Claude won't care if his wife bolts. That's his game. It
will suit him down to the ground."
This was a proposition Maisie could perfectly embrace, but it still left
a loophole for triumph. She turned it well over. "You mean if mamma
doesn't come back ever at all?" The composure with which her face was
presented to that prospect would have shown a spectator the long road
she had travelled.
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