It was, of course, ridiculous, that she, Jane Holland, should feel a passion for a man's hat, a passion that brought her heart into her mouth, so that she could not say any of the things that she had thought of.
Brodrick's hat on an arm-chair beside him was shining in the firelight. On his uncomfortable seat Brodrick lowered and darkened, an incarnate gloom.
"How happy your hat looks," said Jane, smiling at it again.
"I'm glad it amuses you," said Brodrick.
Jane made tea.
He rose, wrapped in his dream, and took his cup from her. He sat down again, in his dream, and put his cup on the arm-chair and left it there as an offering to the hat. Then, with an immense, sustained politeness, he began to talk.
Now that Hambleby had become a classic; he supposed that her ambition was almost satisfied.
It was so much so, Jane said, that she was tired of hearing about Hambleby. Whereupon Brodrick inquired with positively formidable politeness, how the new serial was getting on.
"Very well," said Jane. "How's the 'Monthly Review'?"
Brodrick intimated that the state of the "Monthly Review" was prosperity itself, and he asked her if she had heard lately from Mr. Prothero?