Stephen was of opinion that poor
old Hilary must look out what he was doing. Beyond this he did not go,
keeping even from his wife the more unpleasant of what seemed to him the
possibilities.
Then, in the words she had used to Hilary, Cecilia spoke:
"It's so sordid, Stephen."
He looked at her, and almost with one accord they both said:
"But it's all nonsense!"
These speeches, so simultaneous, stimulated them to a robuster view.
What was this affair, if real, but the sort of episode that they read
of in their papers? What was it, if true, but a duplicate of some bit of
fiction or drama which they daily saw described by that word "sordid"?
Cecilia, indeed, had used this word instinctively. It had come into her
mind at once. The whole affair disturbed her ideals of virtue and good
taste--that particular mental atmosphere mysteriously, inevitably woven
round the soul by the conditions of special breeding and special life.
If, then, this affair were real it was sordid, and if it were sordid it
was repellent to suppose that her family could be mixed up in it; but
her people were mixed up in it, therefore it must be--nonsense!
So the matter rested until Thyme came back from her visit to her
grandfather, and told them of the little model's new and pretty clothes.
When she detailed this news they were all sitting at dinner, over the
ordering of which Cecilia's loyalty had been taxed till her little
headache came, so that there might be nothing too conventional to
over-nourish Stephen or so essentially aesthetic as not to nourish him
at all.
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