Beale
was in no position to dispute? He failed at all events of any such
successful ambiguity as could keep her, when once they began to look
across at France, from regarding even what was least explained as most
in the spirit of their old happy times, their rambles and expeditions in
the easier better days of their first acquaintance. Never before had she
had so the sense of giving him a lead for the sort of treatment of what
was between them that would best carry it off, or of his being grateful
to her for meeting him so much in the right place. She met him literally
at the very point where Mrs. Beale was most to be reckoned with, the
point of the jealousy that was sharp in that lady and of the need of
their keeping it as long as possible obscure to her that poor Mrs. Wix
had still a hand. Yes, she met him too in the truth of the matter that,
as her stepmother had had no one else to be jealous of, she had made
up for so gross a privation by directing the sentiment to a moral
influence. Sir Claude appeared absolutely to convey in a wink that
a moral influence capable of pulling a string was after all a moral
influence exposed to the scratching out of its eyes; and that, this
being the case, there was somebody they couldn't afford to leave
unprotected before they should see a little better what Mrs. Beale was
likely to do. Maisie, true enough, had not to put it into words to
rejoin, in the coffee-room, at luncheon: "What CAN she do but come to
you if papa does take a step that will amount to legal desertion?"
Neither had he then, in answer, to articulate anything but the jollity
of their having found a table at a window from which, as they partook of
cold beef and apollinaris--for he hinted they would have to save lots
of money--they could let their eyes hover tenderly on the far-off white
cliffs that so often had signalled to the embarrassed English a promise
of safety.
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