oung people, who had been asked without their mother,
to celebrate Winny's long skirts; they and the Protheros and Caro
Bickersteth. Jane was not sure that she wanted them to come. She was
afraid of any disturbance in the tranquil depths of her renunciation.

Laura said afterwards that she hardly knew how they had sat through that
luncheon. It was not that Jinny wasn't there and Brodrick was. The awful
thing was that both were so lamentably altered. Brodrick was no longer
the enthusiastic editor, gathering around him the brilliant circle of
the talents; he was the absorbed, depressed and ponderous man of
business. It was as if some spirit that had breathed on him, sustaining
him, lightening his incipient heaviness, had been removed. Jinny sat
opposite him, a pale Mater Dolorosa. Her face, even when she talked to
you, had an intent, remote expression, as if through it all she were
listening for her child's cry. She was silent for the most part, passive
in Prothero's hands. She sat unnoticed and effaced; only from time to
time the young girl, Winny Heron, sent her a look from soft eyes that
adored her.

On the background of Jane's silence and effacement nothing stood out
except Gertrude Collett.

Prothero, who had his hostess on his right hand, had inquired as to the
ultimate fate of the "Monthly Review." Jane referred him to Miss Collett
on his left. Miss Collett knew more about the Review than she did.

Gertrude flushed through all her faded fairness at Prothero's appeal.

"Don't you know," said she, "that it's in Mr. Brodrick's hands entirely
now?"

Prothero did know. That was why he asked. He turned to Jane again. He
was afraid, he said, that the Review, in Brodrick's hands, would be too
good to live.

"_Is_ it too good to live, Gertrude?" said she.

Gertrude looked at Brodrick as if she thought that _he_ was.

"I don't think Mr. Brodrick will let it die," she said. "If he takes a
thing up you can trust him to carry it through. He can fight for his
own. He's a born fighter."

Down at her end of the table beside Brodrick, Laura listened.

"It has been a bit of a struggle, I imagine, up till now," said Prothero
to Jane.

"Up till now" (it was Gertrude who answered) "his hands have been tied.
But now it's absolutely his own thing. He has realized his dream."

If she had seen Prothero's eyes she would have been reminded that
Brodrick's dream had been realized for him by his wife. She saw nothing
but Brodri