Part 74

"You are not," he said, "expecting either of my sisters?"

He said it in his most casual, most uninterested voice. And yet she detected an undertone of anxiety. He did not want his sisters to be there when Miss Holland came. She had spent three years in studying his inflections and his wants.

"Not specially to-day," she said.

Brodrick became manifestly entangled in the process of his thought. The thought itself was as yet obscure to her. She inquired, therefore, where Miss Holland was to be "shown in." Was she a drawing-room author or a library author?

In the perfect and unspoken conventions of Brodrick's house the drawing-room was Miss Collett's place, and the library was his. Tea in the drawing-room meant that he desired Miss Collett's society; tea in the library that he preferred his own. There were also rules for the reception of visitors. Men were shown into the library and stayed there. Great journalistic ladies like Miss Caroline Bickersteth were shown into the drawing-room. Little journalistic ladies with dubious manners, calling, as they did, solely on business, were treated as men and confined strictly to the library.

Brodrick's stare of surprise showed Gertrude that she had blundered. He had a superstitious reverence for those authors who, like Mr. Tanqueray, were great.

"My dear Miss Collett, do you know who she is? The drawing-room, of course, and all possible honour."

She laughed. She had cultivated for Brodrick's sake the art of laughter, and prided herself upon knowing the precise moments to be gay.

"I see," she said. And yet she did not see. How could there be any honour if he did not want his sisters to be there? "That means the best tea-service and my best manners?"

He didn't know, he said, that she had any but the best.

How good they were she let him see when he presented Miss Holland on her arrival, her trailing, conspicuous arrival. Gertrude had never given him occasion to feel that his guests could have a more efficient hostess than his secretary. She spoke of the pleasure it gave her to see Miss Holland, and of the honour that she felt, and of how she had heard of Miss Holland from Mr. Brodrick. There was no becoming thing that Gertrude did not say. And all the time she was aware of Brodrick's eyes fixed on Miss Holland with that curious lack of diffuseness in their vision.

Brodrick was carrying it off by explaining Gertrude to Miss Holland.

"Miss Collett," he said, "is a wonderful lady. She's always doing the most beautiful things, so quietly that you never knew they're done."

"Does anybody," said Jane, "know how the really beautiful things are done?"

"There's a really beautiful tea," said Miss Collett gaily, "in the garden. There are scones and the kind of cake you like."

"You see," Brodrick said, "how she spoils me, how I lie on roses."

"You'd better come," said Miss Collett, "while the scones are still hot."

"While," said Jane, "the roses are still fresh."

He held the door open for her, and on the threshold she turned to Miss Collett who followed her.

"Are you sure," said she, "that he's the horrid Sybarite you think him?"

"I am," said Brodrick, "whatever Miss Collett thinks me. If it pleases her to think I'm a Sybarite I've got to be a Sybarite."

"I see. And when the rose-leaves are crumpled you bring them to Miss Collett, and she irons them out, and makes them all smooth again, so that you don't know they're the same rose-leaves?"

"The rose-leaves never are crumpled."

"Except by some sudden, unconsidered movement of your own?"

"My movements," said Brodrick, "are never sudden and unconsidered."

"What? Never?"

Miss Collett looked a little surprised at this light-handed treatment of the editor.

And Jane observed Brodrick with a new interest as they sat there in the garden and Miss Collett poured out tea. "Mr. Brodrick," she said to herself, "is going to marry Miss Collett, though he doesn't know it."