There were broodings indeed and
silences, and Maisie sank deeper into the vision that for her friend
she was, at the most, superficial, and that also, positively, she was
the more so the more she tried to appear complete. Was the sum of all
knowledge only to know how little in this presence one would ever reach
it? The answer to that question luckily lost itself in the brightness
suffusing the scene as soon as Maisie had thrown out in regard to Mrs.
Beale such a remark as she had never dreamed she should live to make.
"If I thought she was unkind to him--I don't know WHAT I should do!"
Mrs. Wix dropped one of her squints; she even confirmed it by a wild
grunt. "I know what _I_ should!"
Maisie at this felt that she lagged. "Well, I can think of ONE thing."
Mrs. Wix more directly challenged her. "What is it then?"
Maisie met her expression as if it were a game with forfeits for
winking. "I'd KILL her!" That at least, she hoped as she looked away,
would guarantee her moral sense. She looked away, but her companion said
nothing for so long that she at last turned her head again. Then she saw
the straighteners all blurred with tears which after a little seemed to
have sprung from her own eyes. There were tears in fact on both sides of
the spectacles, and they were even so thick that it was presently all
Maisie could do to make out through them that slowly, finally Mrs. Wix
put forth a hand. It was the material pressure that settled this and
even at the end of some minutes more things besides.
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