Part 168

Gertrude said she never wanted to take holidays. She got on better without them. Jane looked at Brodrick.

"I might have gone with you," she said. "After all, Baby never did have convulsions."

"I knew he wouldn't," said Brodrick, and remembered that it was Gertrude who had said he would.

A pause in the dialogue robbed Gertrude's next remark of any relevance it might have had.

"We've seen," said she, "a good deal of Mr. Tanqueray." (Another pause.) "I wonder how Mrs. Tanqueray gets on."

"I imagine," said Brodrick, "that she never did get on with him."

"I meant--without him."

"Oh." He caused the conversation to flourish round another subject.

In the drawing-room, where Gertrude did not follow them all at once, Jane turned to him.

"Hugh," she said, "was I unkind to her?"

"Unkind?"

"Well, was I kind enough?"

"You are always kind," he said.

"Do you think so? Do you really think so?"

"Don't talk about her, Jinny, I've got other things to attend to."

"What things?"

He put his arm round her and drew her to their seat beside the hearth. So drawn, so held, she looked in his face and smiled that singular smile of hers that he found so adorable and incomprehensible.

"I'm tired of being made love to. I'm going," she said, "to fling off all maidenly reserve and make love to you."

She put away his arm from her and rose and seated herself with audacity on his knees.

"The devil gets into me when I have to talk to Gertrude."

She put her arm lightly and shyly about him.

"Do you mind?" she said.

"No, Jinny, I rather like it."

Her arms tightened ever so little.

"It gives you, doesn't it, an agreeable sense of impropriety at your own fireside?"

She did something to his hair which made him look unlike himself or any Brodrick.

"Supposing," she said, "you repulse me? Could you repulse me?"

"No, Jinny; I don't think I ever could."