This might moreover have been taken to be the sense of a remark made by
her stepfather as--one rainy day when the streets were all splash and
two umbrellas unsociable and the wanderers had sought shelter in the
National Gallery--Maisie sat beside him staring rather sightlessly at a
roomful of pictures which he had mystified her much by speaking of with
a bored sigh as a "silly superstition." They represented, with patches
of gold and cataracts of purple, with stiff saints and angular angels,
with ugly Madonnas and uglier babies, strange prayers and prostrations;
so that she at first took his words for a protest against devotional
idolatry--all the more that he had of late often come with her and
with Mrs. Wix to morning church, a place of worship of Mrs. Wix's own
choosing, where there was nothing of that sort; no haloes on heads,
but only, during long sermons, beguiling backs of bonnets, and where,
as her governess always afterwards observed, he gave the most earnest
attention. It presently appeared, however, that his reference was merely
to the affectation of admiring such ridiculous works--an admonition that
she received from him as submissively as she received everything. What
turn it gave to their talk needn't here be recorded: the transition to
the colourless schoolroom and lonely Mrs. Wix was doubtless an effect of
relaxed interest in what was before them. Maisie expressed in her own
way the truth that she never went home nowadays without expecting to
find the temple of her studies empty and the poor priestess cast out.
This conveyed a full appreciation of her peril, and it was in rejoinder
that Sir Claude uttered, acknowledging the source of that peril, the
reassurance at which I have glanced. "Don't be afraid, my dear: I've
squared her." It required indeed a supplement when he saw that it left
the child momentarily blank. "I mean that your mother lets me do what I
want so long as I let her do what SHE wants."