When Nina had gone Brodrick came to Jane.
"Well," he said, "do you still want to go away for three months?"
"It's not that I want to, but I must."
"If you must," he said, "of course you may. I dare say it will be a very good thing for you."
"Shall you mind, Hugh?"
"Oh dear me, no. I shall be very comfortable here with Gertrude."
"And Gertrude," she murmured, "will be very comfortable here with you."
That evening, about nine o'clock, the parlour-maid announced to Brodrick in his study that Miss Winny and Mr. Eddy had called. They were in the dining-room. When Brodrick asked if Mrs. Brodrick was with them he was told that the young gentlemen had said expressly that it was Mr. Brodrick whom they wished to see.
Brodrick desired that they should be brought to him. They were going away, to stay somewhere with a school-fellow of Winny's, and he supposed that they had looked in to say good-bye.
As they entered something told him, as he had not been told before, that his young niece and nephew had grown up. It was not Winny's ripening form and trailing gown, it was not the golden down on Eddy's upper lip; it was not altogether that the outline of their faces had lost the engaging and tender indecision of its youth. It was their unmistakable air of inward assurance and maturity.