Stephen consulted Cecilia with one of those masculine half-glances so discreet that Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace intercepted it without looking up.  She found it rather harder to catch Cecilia’s reply, but she caught it before Stephen did.  It was, ‘You’d better wait, perhaps,’ conveyed by a tiny raising of the left eyebrow and a slight movement to the right of the lower lip.  Putting two and two together, she felt within her bones that they were thinking of the little model.  And she remembered the interesting moment in the omnibus when that attractive-looking man had got out so hastily.

There was no danger whatever from Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace feeling anything.  The circle in which she moved did not now talk scandal, or, indeed, allude to matters of that sort without deep sympathy; and in the second place she was really far too good a fellow, with far too dear a love of life, to interfere with anybody else’s love of it.  At the same time it was interesting.

“That little model, now,” she said, “what about her?”

“Is that the girl I saw?” broke in Mr. Purcey, with his accustomed shrewdness.

Stephen gave him the look with which he was accustomed to curdle the blood of persons who gave evidence before Commissions.

‘This fellow is impossible,’ he thought.

The little black bees flying below Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace’s dark hair, done in the Early Italian fashion, tranquilly sucked honey from Stephen’s face.

“She seemed to me,” she answered, “such a very likely type.”

“Ah!” murmured Stephen, “there would be, I suppose, a danger—–­” And he looked angrily at Cecilia.

Without ceasing to converse with Mr. Purcey and Signor Egregio Pozzi, she moved her left eye upwards.  Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace understood this to mean:  ‘Be frank, and guarded!’ Stephen, however, interpreted it otherwise.  To him it signified:  ‘What the deuce do you look at me for?’ And he felt justly hurt.  He therefore said abruptly: 

“What would you do in a case like that?”

Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, sliding her face sideways, with a really charming little smile, asked softly: 

“In a case like what?”

And her little eyes fled to Thyme, who had slipped into the room, and was whispering to her mother.

Cecilia rose.

“You know my daughter,” she said.  “Will you excuse me just a minute?  I’m so very sorry.”  She glided towards the door, and threw a flying look back.  It was one of those social moments precious to those who are escaping them.

Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace was smiling, Stephen frowning at his boots; Mr. Purcey stared admiringly at Thyme, and Thyme, sitting very upright, was calmly regarding the unfortunate Egregio Pozzi, who apparently could not bring himself to speak.

When Cecilia found herself outside, she stood still a moment to compose her nerves.  Thyme had told her that Hilary was in the dining-room, and wanted specially to see her.