you," she said, "even if we don't reward you. How can
we, when you've done so much?"

"My reward would be--not to be misunderstood."

"Do I misunderstand you? Does _he_?"

"Mr. Brodrick? Never."

"I, then?"

"You? I think you thought I wanted to come between you and the
children."

"I never thought you wanted to come between me and anything."

Her hands that held her dropped.

"But you're right, Gertrude. I'm a brute and you're an angel."

She turned from her and left her there.

LIV

She knew that she had dealt a wound, and she was sorry for it. It was
awful to see Gertrude going about the house in her flagrant secrecy. It
was unbearable to Jane, Gertrude's soft-flaming, dedicated face, and
that little evasive, sacred look of hers, as if she had her hand for
ever on her heart, hiding her wound. It was a look that reminded Jane,
and was somehow, she felt, intended to remind her, that Gertrude was
pure spirit as well as pure womanhood in her too discernible emotion.
Was it not spiritual to serve as she served, to spend as she spent
herself, so angelically, bearing the dreadful weight of Brodrick's
marriage--the consequences, so to speak, of that corporeal tie--on her
winged shoulders?

She could see that Hugh looked at it in that light (as well he might)
when one evening he spoke remorsefully of the amount they put on her.

A month had passed since he had given the care of his children into
Gertrude's hands. She was up-stairs now superintending their disposal
for the night. He and Jane were alone in a half-hour before dinner,
waiting for John and Henry and the Protheros to come and dine. The house
was very still. Brodrick could not have believed that it was possible,
the perfection of the peace that had descended on them. He appealed to
Jane. She couldn't deny that it was peace.

Jane didn't deny it. She had nothing whatever to say against an
arrangement that had turned out so entirely for the children's good. She
kept her secret to herself. Her secret was that she would have given all
the peace and all the perfection for one scream of Hughy's and the
child's arms round her neck.

"You wouldn't know," Brodrick said, "that there was a child in the
house."

Jane agreed. Ah, yes, if _that_ was peace, they had it.

Well, wasn't it? After that infernal row he made? You couldn't say
anything when the poor little chap was ill and couldn't help it, but you
couldn't have let him cultivate screaming