moment that Brodrick arrived from the station with Miss
Holland.

"Is it a garden-party?" Jane inquired.

"No," said Brodrick, "it's my family."

She came on with him over the lawn. And the group rose to its feet; it
broke up with little movements and murmurs, in a restrained, dignified
expectancy. Jane had the sense of being led towards some unaccountable
triumph and acclamation.

They closed round her, these unknown Brodricks, inaudibly stirred, with
some unspoken, incomprehensible emotion in the men's gaze and in the
women's touch. The big boy and girl shared it as they came forward in
their shyness, with affectionate faces and clumsy, abortive encounters
of the hand.

It was the whole Brodrick family moved to its depths, feeling as one. It
could only be so moved by the spectacle of integrity and honour and
incorruptible loyalty to It.

Still moved, it was surrounding Jane when a maid arrived with the
tea-table, and the white cloth waved a signal to Miss Collett across the
lawn. There was then a perceptible pause in the ovation as Brodrick's
secretary appeared.

Even across the lawn Jane could discern trouble in Miss Collett's face.
But Miss Collett's face was plastic in readjustments, and by the time
she was fairly on the scene it had recaptured the habit of its smile.
The smile, in greeting, covered and carried off the betraying reluctance
of her hand. It implied that, if Miss Holland was to be set up in a high
place and worshipped, Miss Collett was anxious to observe the
appropriate ritual. Having observed it, she took, with her quiet,
inconspicuous assurance, the place that was her own. She gave but one
sign of her trouble when Dr. Brodrick was heard congratulating their
guest on the great serial which, said he, by "saving" the magazine, had
"saved" his brother. Then Gertrude quivered slightly, and the blood
flushed in her set face and passed as fierce heat passes through iron.

While they were talking Jane had opportunity to watch and wonder at the
firm, consolidated society that was Brodrick's family. These faces
proclaimed by their resemblance the material link. Mr. John Brodrick was
a more thick-set, an older, graver-lined, and grizzled Hugh, a Hugh who
had lost his sombre fixity of gaze. Dr. Henry Brodrick was a tall,
attenuated John, with a slightly, ever so slightly receding chin. Mrs.
Heron was Hugh again made feminine and slender. She had Hugh's features,
refined and diminished. She had Hugh's