man slightly coloured: he must have felt this profession of innocence to
be excessive as addressed to Maisie. It was inevitable to say to her,
however, that of course her mother loathed the lady of the other house.
He couldn't go there again with his wife's consent, and he wasn't the
man--he begged her to believe, falling once more, in spite of himself,
into the scruple of showing the child he didn't trip--to go there
without it. He was liable in talking with her to take the tone of her
being also a man of the world. He had gone to Mrs. Beale's to fetch
away Maisie, but that was altogether different. Now that she was in
her mother's house what pretext had he to give her mother for paying
calls on her father's wife? And of course Mrs. Beale couldn't come to
Ida's--Ida would tear her limb from limb. Maisie, with this talk of
pretexts, remembered how much Mrs. Beale had made of her being a good
one, and how, for such a function, it was her fate to be either much
depended on or much missed. Sir Claude moreover recognised on this
occasion that perhaps things would take a turn later on; and he wound
up by saying: "I'm sure she does sincerely care for you--how can she
possibly help it? She's very young and very pretty and very clever: I
think she's charming. But we must walk very straight. If you'll help me,
you know, I'll help YOU," he concluded in the pleasant fraternising,
equalising, not a bit patronising way which made the child ready to go
through anything for him and the beauty of which, as she dimly felt, was
that it was so much less a deceitful descent to her years than a real
indifference to them.

It gave her moments of secret rapture--moments of believing she might
help him indeed. The only mystification in this was the imposing time of
life that her elders spoke of as youth. For Sir Claude then Mrs. Beale
was "young," just as for Mrs. Wix Sir Claude was: that was one of the
merits for which Mrs. Wix most commended him. What therefore was Maisie