" She was
at present making love, singular as it appeared, to Mrs. Wix, and her
young friend's mind had never moved in such freedom as on thus finding
itself face to face with the question of what she wanted to get. This
period of the _omelette aux rognons_ and the poulet saute, while her sole
surviving parent, her fourth, fairly chattered to her governess, left
Maisie rather wondering if her governess would hold out. It was strange,
but she became on the spot quite as interested in Mrs. Wix's moral
sense as Mrs. Wix could possibly be in hers: it had risen before her so
pressingly that this was something new for Mrs. Wix to resist. Resisting
Mrs. Beale herself promised at such a rate to become a very different
business from resisting Sir Claude's view of her. More might come of
what had happened--whatever it was--than Maisie felt she could have
expected. She put it together with a suspicion that, had she ever in
her life had a sovereign changed, would have resembled an impression,
baffled by the want of arithmetic, that her change was wrong: she groped
about in it that she was perhaps playing the passive part in a case of
violent substitution. A victim was what she should surely be if the
issue between her step-parents had been settled by Mrs. Beale's saying:
"Well, if she can live with but one of us alone, with which in the world
should it be but me?" That answer was far from what, for days, she had
nursed herself in, and the desolation of it was deepened by the absence
of anything from Sir Claude to show he had not had to take it as
triumphant.
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