She smiled. The editor's attitude to authors was one of prolonged amusement. Prodigious people, authors, in Brodrick's opinion. More than once, by way of relieving his somewhat perfunctory communion with Miss Collett, he had discussed the eccentricity, the vanity, the inexhaustible absurdity of authors. So that it was permissible for her to smile. "You are not," he said, "expecting either of my sisters?" He said it in his most casual, most uninterested voice. And yet she detected an undertone of anxiety. He did not want his sisters to be there when Miss Holland came. She had spent three years in studying his inflections and his wants. "Not specially to-day," she said. Brodrick became manifestly entangled in the process of his thought. The thought itself was as yet obscure to her. She inquired, therefore, where Miss Holland was to be "shown in." Was she a drawing-room author or a library author? In the perfect and unspoken conventions of Brodrick's house the drawing-room was Miss Collett's place, and the library was his. Tea in the drawing-room meant that he desired Miss Collett's society; tea in the library that he preferred his own. There were also rules for the reception of visitors. Men were shown into the library and stayed there. Great journalistic ladies like Miss Caroline Bickersteth were shown into the drawing-room. Little journalistic ladies with dubious manners, calling, as they did, solely on business, were treated as men and confined strictly to the library. Brodrick's stare of surprise showed Gertrude that she had blundered. He had a superstitious reverence for those authors who, like Mr. Tanqueray, were great. "My dear Miss Collett, do you know who she is? The drawing-room, of course, and all possible honour." She laughed. She had cultivated for Brodrick's sake the art of laughter, and prided herself upon knowing the precise moments to be gay. "I see," she said. And yet she did not see. How could there be any honour if he did not want his sisters to be there? "That means the best tea-service and my best manners?" He didn't know, he said, that she had any but the best. How good they were she let him see when he presented Miss Holland on her arrival, her trailing, conspicuous arrival. Gertrude had never given him occasion to feel that his guests could have a more efficient hostess than his secretary. She spoke of the pleasure it gave her to see Miss Holland, and of the honour that she felt, and of how she had heard of Miss Holland from Mr. Brodrick. There was no becoming thing that Gertrude did not say. And all the time she was aware of Brodrick's eyes fixed on Miss Holland with that curious lack of diffuseness in their vision. Brodrick was carrying it off by explaining Gertrude to Miss Holland. "Miss Collett," he said, "is a wonderful lady. She's always doing the most beautiful things, so quietly that you never knew they're done." "Does anybody," said Jane, "know how the really beautiful things are done?"