She suddenly felt herself swell with a passion of protest.
"I never, NEVER hoped I wasn't going again to see Mrs. Beale! I didn't,
I didn't, I didn't!" she repeated. Mrs. Wix bounced about with a force
of rejoinder of which she also felt that she must anticipate the
concussion and which, though the good lady was evidently charged to the
brim, hung fire long enough to give time for an aggravation. "She's
beautiful and I love her! I love her and she's beautiful!"
"And I'm hideous and you hate ME?" Mrs. Wix fixed her a moment, then
caught herself up. "I won't embitter you by absolutely accusing you of
that; though, as for my being hideous, it's hardly the first time I've
been told so! I know it so well that even if I haven't whiskers--have
I?--I dare say there are other ways in which the Countess is a Venus to
me! My pretensions must therefore seem to you monstrous--which comes to
the same thing as your not liking me. But do you mean to go so far as to
tell me that you WANT to live with them in their sin?"
"You know what I want, you know what I want!"--Maisie spoke with the
shudder of rising tears.
"Yes, I do; you want me to be as bad as yourself! Well, I won't. There!
Mrs. Beale's as bad as your father!" Mrs. Wix went on.
"She's not!--she's not!" her pupil almost shrieked in retort.
"You mean because Sir Claude at least has beauty and wit and grace? But
he pays just as the Countess pays!" Mrs. Wix, who now rose as she spoke,
fairly revealed a latent cynicism.
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