They were sitting in the delicate shadow of the lime-tree. Outside, the lawn was drenched with light, light that ran quivering into the little inlets and pools among the shadows. The cropped grass shone clear as emerald, and all the garden showed clear-cut and solid and stable in its propriety and order. Still more distinct, more stable and more solid, more ineradicably fixed in order and propriety, were the four figures of the Brodricks. Sitting there, in a light that refused, in spite of the lime-tree, to lend itself to any mystery or enchantment, they maintained themselves in a positively formidable reality. All these Brodricks had firm, thick-skinned faces in which lines came slowly, and were few but strong. Faces, they were, of men who have lived in absolute sobriety and sanity, untorn by any temptation to live otherwise; faces of women to whom motherhood has brought the ultimate content. Comfortably material persons, sitting in a deep peace, not to be rapt from it by any fantasy, nor beguiled by any dream, they paid only in a high morality their debt to the intangible. This afternoon, in spite of themselves, they were roused somewhat from the peace they sat in. They were expecting somebody. "I suppose, when she arrives, we shall all have to sit at the lady's feet," said Mrs. Levine. "_I_'ve no objection," said the Doctor; "after what she's done." "It was pretty decent of her," said Levine. He was dark, nervous and solemn-eyed, a lean man of his race, and handsome. Sophy Brodrick had not loved her husband when she married him. She adored him now, because of the beauty that had passed from him into her children. "I say, Uncle Louis, you _might_ tell me what she _did_ do," said Eddy Heron. "She got your Uncle Hughy out of a tight place, my boy." "I say, what's _he_ been doing?" Mr. Levine smiled inscrutably, while his wife shook her head at him. "He's been going it, has he? Good old Uncle Hughy!" Eddy's mother thought it would be nice if he and Winny went down the Heath road to meet Uncle Hughy and Miss Holland. Whereupon Eddy embraced his mother, being unable to agree with her. "You really believe," said Mr. John Brodrick, who seemed anxious to be sure of his facts before he committed himself, "you really believe that if it had not been for this lady he'd have had to give it up?" "Well," said Levine judicially, "she practically saved it. You see he _would_ start it with George Tanqueray. And who cares about George Tanqueray? That's what wrecked him. I told him at the time it was sheer lunacy, but he wouldn't listen to me. _Why_" (Levine spoke in a small excited voice with sudden high notes), "he hadn't subscriptions enough to float the thing for twenty-four hours. As soon as he gets Miss Holland they go up by leaps and bounds, and it's bin goin' steady ever since. How long it'll keep goin's another thing." "I understood Hugh to say," said John, "that the arrangements involved some considerable sacrifice to the lady."