But Maisie could quite feel with him now
that he had really not expected this advantage to be driven so home. Oh
they hadn't at all got to where Mrs. Wix would stop, for the next minute
she was driving harder than ever. It was the result of his saying with a
certain dryness, though so kindly that what most affected Maisie in it
was his patience: "My dear friend, it's simply a matter in which I must
judge for myself. You've judged FOR me, I know, a good deal, of late, in
a way that I appreciate, I assure you, down to the ground. But you can't
do it always; no one can do that for another, don't you see, in every
case. There are exceptions, particular cases that turn up and that are
awfully delicate. It would be too easy if I could shift it all off on
you: it would be allowing you to incur an amount of responsibility that
I should simply become quite ashamed of. You'll find, I'm sure, that
you'll have quite as much as you'll enjoy if you'll be so good as to
accept the situation as circumstances happen to make it for you and to
stay here with our friend, till I rejoin you, on the footing of as much
pleasantness and as much comfort--and I think I have a right to add, to
both of you, of as much faith in ME--as possible."
Oh he was princely indeed: that came out more and more with every word
he said and with the particular way he said it, and Maisie could feel
his monitress stiffen almost with anguish against the increase of his
spell and then hurl herself as a desperate defence from it into the
quite confessed poorness of violence, of iteration.
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