Wix's dream that she might still see his
errors renounced and his delinquencies redeemed. It would all be a
sacrifice--under eyes that would miss no faintest shade--to what even
the strange frequenters of her ladyship's earlier period used to call
the real good of the little unfortunate. Maisie's head held a suspicion
of much that, during the last long interval, had confusedly, but quite
candidly, come and gone in his own; a glimpse, almost awe-stricken in
its gratitude, of the miracle her old governess had wrought. That
functionary could not in this connexion have been more impressive, even
at second-hand, if she had been a prophetess with an open scroll or some
ardent abbess speaking with the lips of the Church. She had clung day
by day to their plastic associate, plying him with her deep, narrow
passion, doing her simple utmost to convert him, and so working on him
that he had at last really embraced his fine chance. That the chance was
not delusive was sufficiently guaranteed by the completeness with which
he could finally figure it out that, in case of his taking action,
neither Ida nor Beale, whose book, on each side, it would only too well
suit, would make any sort of row.
It sounds, no doubt, too penetrating, but it was not all as an effect of
Sir Claude's betrayals that Maisie was able to piece together the beauty
of the special influence through which, for such stretches of time,
he had refined upon propriety by keeping, so far as possible, his
sentimental interests distinct.
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