The situation however, had taken a twist when, on another of her returns, at Susan's side, extremely tired, from the pursuit of exercise qualified by much hovering, she encountered another emotion. She on this occasion learnt at the door that her instant attendance was requested in the drawing-room. Crossing the threshold in a cloud of shame she discerned through the blur Mrs. Beale seated there with a gentleman who immediately drew the pain from her predicament by rising before her as the original of the photograph of Sir Claude. She felt the moment she looked at him that he was by far the most shining presence that had ever made her gape, and her pleasure in seeing him, in knowing that he took hold of her and kissed her, as quickly throbbed into a strange shy pride in him, a perception of his making up for her fallen state, for Susan's public nudges, which quite bruised her, and for all the lessons that, in the dead schoolroom, where at times she was almost afraid to stay alone, she was bored with not having. It was as if he had told her on the spot that he belonged to her, so that she could already show him off and see the effect he produced. No, nothing else that was most beautiful ever belonging to her could kindle that particular joy—not Mrs. Beale at that very moment, not papa when he was gay, nor mamma when she was dressed, nor Lisette when she was new. The joy almost overflowed in tears when he laid his hand on her and drew her to him, telling her, with a smile of which the promise was as bright as that of a Christmas-tree, that he knew her ever so well by her mother, but had come to see her now so that he might know her for himself. She could see that his view of this kind of knowledge was to make her come away with him, and, further, that it was just what he was there for and had already been some time: arranging it with Mrs. Beale and getting on with that lady in a manner evidently not at all affected by her having on the arrival of his portrait thought of him so ill. They had grown almost intimate—or had the air of it—over their discussion; and it was still further conveyed to Maisie that Mrs. Beale had made no secret, and would make yet less of one, of all that it cost to let her go. "You seem so tremendously eager," she said to the child, "that I hope you're at least clear about Sir Claude's relation to you. It doesn't appear to occur to him to give you the necessary reassurance."
Maisie, a trifle mystified, turned quickly to her new friend. "Why it's of course that you're married to her, isn't it?"
Her anxious emphasis started them off, as she had learned to call it; this was the echo she infallibly and now quite resignedly produced; moreover Sir Claude's laughter was an indistinguishable part of the sweetness of his being there. "We've been married, my dear child, three months, and my interest in you is a consequence, don't you know? of my great affection for your mother. In coming here it's of course for your mother I'm acting."
"Oh I know," Maisie said with all the candour of her competence. "She can't come herself—except just to the door." Then as she thought afresh: "Can't she come even to the door now?"
"There you are!" Mrs. Beale exclaimed to Sir Claude. She spoke as if his dilemma were ludicrous.
His kind face, in a hesitation, seemed to recognise it; but he answered the child with a frank smile. "No—not very well."
"Because she has married you?"
He promptly accepted this reason. "Well, that has a good deal to do with it."
He was so delightful to talk to that Maisie pursued the subject. "But papa—he has married Miss Overmore."
"Ah you'll see that he won't come for you at your mother's," that lady interposed.
"Yes, but that won't be for a long time," Maisie hastened to respond.
"We won't talk about it now—you've months and months to put in first." And Sir Claude drew her closer.
"Oh that's what makes it so hard to give her up!" Mrs. Beale made this point with her arms out to her stepdaughter. Maisie, quitting Sir Claude, went over to them and, clasped in a still tenderer embrace, felt entrancingly the extension of the field of happiness. "I'll come for you," said her stepmother, "if Sir Claude keeps you too long: we must make him quite understand that! Don't talk to me about her ladyship!" she went on to their visitor so familiarly that it was almost as if they must have met before. "I know her ladyship as if I had made her. They're a pretty pair of parents!" cried Mrs. Beale.
Maisie had so often heard them called so that the remark diverted her but an instant from the agreeable wonder of this grand new form of allusion to her mother; and that, in its turn, presently left her free to catch at the pleasant possibility, in connexion with herself, of a relation much happier as between Mrs. Beale and Sir Claude than as between mamma and papa. Still the next thing that happened was that her interest in such a relation brought to her lips a fresh question.
"Have you seen papa?" she asked of Sir Claude.
It was the signal for their going off again, as her small stoicism had perfectly taken for granted that it would be. All that Mrs. Beale had nevertheless to add was the vague apparent sarcasm: "Oh papa!"
"I'm assured he's not at home," Sir Claude replied to the child; "but if he had been I should have hoped for the pleasure of seeing him."
"Won't he mind your coming?" Maisie asked as with need of the knowledge.
"Oh you bad little girl!" Mrs. Beale humorously protested.
The child could see that at this Sir Claude, though still moved to mirth, coloured a little; but he spoke to her very kindly. "That's just what I came to see, you know—whether your father would mind. But Mrs. Beale appears strongly of the opinion that he won't."
This lady promptly justified that view to her stepdaughter. "It will be very interesting, my dear, you know, to find out what it is to-day that your father does mind. I'm sure I don't know!"—and she seemed to repeat, though with perceptible resignation, her plaint of a moment before. "Your father, darling, is a very odd person indeed." She turned with this, smiling, to Sir Claude. "But perhaps it's hardly civil for me to say that of his not objecting to have you in the house. If you knew some of the people he does have!"
Maisie knew them all, and none indeed were to be compared to Sir Claude. He laughed back at Mrs. Beale; he looked at such moments quite as Mrs. Wix, in the long stories she told her pupil, always described the lovers of her distressed beauties—"the perfect gentleman and strikingly handsome." He got up, to the child's regret, as if he were going. "Oh I dare say we should be all right!"
Mrs. Beale once more gathered in her little charge, holding her close and looking thoughtfully over her head at their visitor. "It's so charming—for a man of your type—to have wanted her so much!"
"What do you know about my type?" Sir Claude laughed. "Whatever it may be I dare say it deceives you. The truth about me is simply that I'm the most unappreciated of—what do you call the fellows?—'family-men.' Yes, I'm a family-man; upon my honour I am!"
"Then why on earth," cried Mrs. Beale, "didn't you marry a family-woman?"
Sir Claude looked at her hard. "You know who one marries, I think. Besides, there are no family-women—hanged if there are! None of them want any children—hanged if they do!"