It must also be admitted that he took them far, further perhaps than
was always warranted by the old-fashioned conscience, the dingy
decencies, of Maisie's simple instructress. There were hours when Mrs.
Wix sighingly testified to the scruples she surmounted, seemed to ask
what other line one COULD take with a young person whose experience
had been, as it were, so peculiar. "It isn't as if you didn't already
know everything, is it, love?" and "I can't make you any worse than
you ARE, can I, darling?"--these were the terms in which the good lady
justified to herself and her pupil her pleasant conversational ease.
What the pupil already knew was indeed rather taken for granted than
expressed, but it performed the useful function of transcending all
textbooks and supplanting all studies. If the child couldn't be worse
it was a comfort even to herself that she was bad--a comfort offering
a broad firm support to the fundamental fact of the present crisis:
the fact that mamma was fearfully jealous. This was another side
of the circumstance of mamma's passion, and the deep couple in the
schoolroom were not long in working round to it. It brought them face
to face with the idea of the inconvenience suffered by any lady who
marries a gentleman producing on other ladies the charming effect of
Sir Claude. That such ladies wouldn't be able to help falling in love
with him was a reflexion naturally irritating to his wife. One day
when some accident, some crash of a banged door or some scurry of
a scared maid, had rendered this truth particularly vivid, Maisie,
receptive and profound, suddenly said to her companion: "And you, my
dear, are you in love with him too?" Even her profundity had left
a margin for a laugh; so she was a trifle startled by the solemn
promptitude with which Mrs. Wix plumped out: "Over head and ears.
I've NEVER since you ask me, been so far gone."

This boldness had none the less no effect of deterrence for her when, a