er to her liking. At each
of these small fastidious operations she frowned like one who resents
interference with the perfected system of her own arrangements.

She sat down at the writing-table and took from a pigeonhole a sheaf of
tradesmen's bills. These she checked and docketed conscientiously, after
entering their totals in a book marked "Household." From all these acts
she seemed to draw some secret enjoyment and satisfaction. Here she was
evidently in a realm secure from the interference of the incompetent.

With a key attached to her person she now unlocked the inmost shrine of
the writing-table. A small squat heap of silver and of copper sat there
like the god of the shrine. She took it in her hand and counted it and
restored it to its consecrated seat. She then made a final entry: "Cash
in Hand, thirty-five shillings."

She sat smiling in tender contemplation of this legend. It stood for the
savings of the last month, effected by her deft manipulation of the
household. There was no suggestion of cupidity in her smile, nor any
hint of economy adored and pursued for its own sake.

She was Gertrude Collett, the lady who for three years had acted as
Brodrick's housekeeper, or, as she now preferred to call herself, his
secretary. She had contrived, out of this poor material of his weekly
bills, to fashion for herself a religion and an incorporeal romance.

She raised her face to the photograph of Brodrick, as if spiritually she
rendered her account to him. And Brodrick's face, from the ledge of the
writing-table, looked over Gertrude's head with an air of being unmoved
by it all, with eyes intent on their own object.

She, Brodrick's secretary, might have been about five-and-thirty. She
was fair with the fairness which is treacherous to women of her age,
which suffers when they suffer. But Gertrude's skin still held the
colours of her youth as some strong fabric holds its dye. Her face
puzzled you; it was so broad across the cheek-bones that you would have
judged it coarse; it narrowed suddenly in the jaws, pointing her chin to
subtlety. Her nose, broad also across the nostrils and bridge, showed a
sharp edge in profile; it was alert, competent, inquisitive. But there
was mystery again in the long-drawn, pale-rose lines of her mouth. A
wide mouth with irregular lips, not coarse, but coarsely finished. Its
corners must once have drooped with pathos, but this tendency was
overcome or corrected by the serene habi