"Poor Gertrude, she'll have more nerves than any of us if she has to look after the house, and the accounts, and Jacky, and Hughy, and _you_----" "She doesn't look after me," said Brodrick stiffly, and left the room. Jane turned to Gertrude. "Was that your idea, or his?" "How can any idea be mine," said Gertrude, "if I always agree with Mr. Brodrick? As a matter of fact it was the Doctor's." "Yes. It was very like him." "He spoke to Mr. Brodrick yesterday. And I am glad he did." "Why are you glad?" "Because it was taken out of my hands. I don't want you to think that I interfere, that I put myself forward, that I suggested this arrangement about the children. If it's to be, you must understand distinctly that I and my ideas and my wishes have nothing to do with it. If I offered myself it was because I was compelled. Mr. Brodrick was at his wits' end." ("Poor dear, _I_ drove him there," said Jane.) "It's put me in a very difficult position. I have to appear to be taking everything on myself, to be thrusting myself in everywhere, whereas the truth is I can only keep on" (she closed her eyes, as one dizzied with the perilous path she trod) "by ignoring myself, putting myself altogether on one side." "Do you hate it?" Jane said softly. "No. It's the only way. But sometimes one is foolish--one looks for a little recognition and reward----" Jane put her hands on the other woman's shoulders and gazed into her face. "We do recognize 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.