"All the air
in France, Sir Claude, won't, I think, give you the courage to deny that
you're simply afraid of her!"
Oh this time he did look queer; Maisie had no need of Susan's vocabulary
to note it! It would have come to her of itself as, with his hand on
the door, he turned his eyes from his stepdaughter to her governess and
then back again. Resting on Maisie's, though for ever so short a time,
there was something they gave up to her and tried to explain. His lips,
however, explained nothing; they only surrendered to Mrs. Wix. "Yes. I'm
simply afraid of her!" He opened the door and passed out. It brought
back to Maisie his confession of fear of her mother; it made her
stepmother then the second lady about whom he failed of the particular
virtue that was supposed most to mark a gentleman. In fact there were
three of them, if she counted in Mrs. Wix, before whom he had undeniably
quailed. Well, his want of valour was but a deeper appeal to her
tenderness. To thrill with response to it she had only to remember all
the ladies she herself had, as they called it, funked.
XXIV
It continued to rain so hard that our young lady's private dream of
explaining the Continent to their visitor had to contain a provision for
some adequate treatment of the weather. At the _table d'hote_ that evening
she threw out a variety of lights: this was the second ceremony of the
sort she had sat through, and she would have neglected her privilege
and dishonoured her vocabulary--which indeed consisted mainly of the
names of dishes--if she had not been proportionately ready to dazzle
with interpretations.
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