Hilary nodded.

“But I’m afraid it’s the only way,” went on Cecilia, rather hastily.  “And, of course, it will be no good saying anything to Father; one must simply let him suppose that she has got tired of it.”

Again Hilary nodded.

“He will think it very funny,”, murmured Cecilia pensively.  “Oh, and have you thought that taking her away from where she is will only make those people talk the more?”

Hilary shrugged his shoulders.

“It may make that man furious,” Cecilia added.

“It will.”

“Oh, but then, of course, if you don’t see her afterwards, they will have no—­no excuse at all.”

“I shall not see her afterwards,” said Hilary, “if I can avoid it.”

Cecilia looked at him.

“It’s very sweet of you, Hilary.”

“What is sweet?” asked Hilary stonily.

“Why, to take all this trouble.  Is it really necessary for you to do anything?” But looking in his face, she went on hastily:  “Yes, yes, it’s best.  Let’s go at once.  Oh, those people in the drawing-room!  Do wait ten minutes.”

A little later, running up to put her hat on, she wondered why it was that Hilary always made her want to comfort him.  Stephen never affected her like this.

Having little or no notion where to go, they walked in the direction of Bayswater.  To place the Park between Hound Street and the little model was the first essential.  On arriving at the other side of the Broad Walk, they made instinctively away from every sight of green.  In a long, grey street of dismally respectable appearance they found what they were looking for, a bed-sitting room furnished, advertised on a card in the window.  The door was opened by the landlady, a tall woman of narrow build, with a West-Country accent, and a rather hungry sweetness running through her hardness.  They stood talking with her in a passage, whose oilcloth of variegated pattern emitted a faint odour.  The staircase could be seen climbing steeply up past walls covered with a shining paper cut by narrow red lines into small yellow squares.  An almanack, of so floral a design that nobody would surely want to steal it, hung on the wall; below it was an umbrella stand without umbrellas.  The dim little passage led past two grimly closed doors painted rusty red to two half-open doors with dull glass in their panels.  Outside, in the street from which they had mounted by stone steps, a shower of sleet had begun to fall.  Hilary shut the door, but the cold spirit of that shower had already slipped into the bleak, narrow house.

“This is the apartment, m’m,” said the landlady, opening the first of the rusty-coloured doors.  The room, which had a paper of blue roses on a yellow ground, was separated from another room by double doors.

“I let the rooms together sometimes, but just now that room’s taken—­a young gentleman in the City; that’s why I’m able to let this cheap.”