“Not quite the sort of place for you to go poking about in, Thyme,” Stephen said ironically.  “Do you think so, Martin?”

“Why not?”

Stephen raised his brows, and glanced towards his wife.  Her face was dubious, a little scared.  There was a silence.  Then Bianca spoke: 

“Well?” That word, like nearly all her speeches, seemed rather to disconcert her hearers.

“So Hughs ill-treats her?” said Hilary.

“She says so,” replied Cecilia—­“at least, that’s what I understood.  Of course, I don’t know any details.”

“She had better get rid of him, I should think,” Bianca murmured.

Out of the silence that followed Thyme’s clear voice was heard saying: 

“She can’t get a divorce; she could get a separation.”

Cecilia rose uneasily.  These words concreted suddenly a wealth of half-acknowledged doubts about her little daughter.  This came of letting her hear people talk, and go about with Martin!  She might even have been listening to her grandfather—­such a thought was most disturbing.  And, afraid, on the one hand, of gainsaying the liberty of speech, and, on the other, of seeming to approve her daughter’s knowledge of the world, she looked at her husband.

But Stephen did not speak, feeling, no doubt, that to pursue the subject would be either to court an ethical, even an abstract, disquisition, and this one did not do in anybody’s presence, much less one’s wife’s or daughter’s; or to touch on sordid facts of doubtful character, which was equally distasteful in the circumstances.  He, too, however, was uneasy that Thyme should know so much.

The dusk was gathering outside; the fire threw a flickering light, fitfully outlining their figures, making those faces, so familiar to each other, a little mysterious.

At last Stephen broke the silence.  “Of course, I’m very sorry for her, but you’d better let it alone—­you can’t tell with that sort of people; you never can make out what they want—­it’s safer not to meddle.  At all events, it’s a matter for a Society to look into first!”

Cecilia answered:  “But she’s, on my conscience, Stephen.”

“They’re all on my conscience,” muttered Hilary.

Bianca looked at him for the first time; then, turning to her nephew, said:  “What do you say, Martin?”

The young man, whose face was stained by the firelight the colour of pale cheese, made no answer.

But suddenly through the stillness came a voice: 

“I have thought of something.”

Everyone turned round.  Mr. Stone was seen emerging from behind “The Shadow”; his frail figure, in its grey tweeds, his silvery hair and beard, were outlined sharply against the wall.

“Why, Father,” Cecilia said, “we didn’t know that you were here!”

Mr. Stone looked round bewildered; it seemed as if he, too, had been ignorant of that fact.