"Who IS it this time, do you know?"
Mrs. Wix tried blind dignity. "Who is what, Sir Claude?"
"The man who stands the cabs. Who was in the one that waited at your
door?"
At this challenge she faltered so long that her young friend's pitying
conscience gave her a hand. "It wasn't the Captain."
This good intention, however, only converted the excellent woman's
scruple to a more ambiguous stare; besides of course making Sir Claude
go off. Mrs. Wix fairly appealed to him. "Must I really tell you?"
His amusement continued. "Did she make you promise not to?"
Mrs. Wix looked at him still harder. "I mean before Maisie."
Sir Claude laughed again. "Why SHE can't hurt him!"
Maisie felt herself, as it passed, brushed by the light humour of this.
"Yes, I can't hurt him."
The straighteners again roofed her over; after which they seemed to
crack with the explosion of their wearer's honesty. Amid the flying
splinters Mrs. Wix produced a name. "Mr. Tischbein."
There was for an instant a silence that, under Sir Claude's influence
and while he and Maisie looked at each other, suddenly pretended to be
that of gravity. "We don't know Mr. Tischbein, do we, dear?"
Maisie gave the point all needful thought. "No, I can't place Mr.
Tischbein."
It was a passage that worked visibly on their friend. "You must pardon
me, Sir Claude," she said with an austerity of which the note was real,
"if I thank God to your face that he has in his mercy--I mean his mercy
to our charge--allowed me to achieve this act.
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