These arguments had really fallen into
their place, for our young friend, at the very touch of that tone in
which she had heard her new title declared. She was still, as a result
of so many parents, a daughter to somebody even after papa and mamma
were to all intents dead. If her father's wife and her mother's husband,
by the operation of a natural or, for all she knew, a legal rule, were
in the shoes of their defunct partners, then Mrs. Beale's partner was
exactly as defunct as Sir Claude's and her shoes the very pair to which,
in "Farange _v._ Farange and Others," the divorce court had given
priority. The subject of that celebrated settlement saw the rest of
her day really filled out with the pomp of all that Mrs. Beale assumed.
The assumption rounded itself there between this lady's entertainers,
flourished in a way that left them, in their bottomless element, scarce
a free pair of eyes to exchange signals. It struck Maisie even a little
that there was a rope or two Mrs. Wix might have thrown out if she
would, a rocket or two she might have sent up. They had at any rate
never been so long together without communion or telegraphy, and their
companion kept them apart by simply keeping them with her. From this
situation they saw the grandeur of their intenser relation to her pass
and pass like an endless procession. It was a day of lively movement
and of talk on Mrs. Beale's part so brilliant and overflowing as to
represent music and banners.
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