"Not often," she said; and turning rather markedly once more to Stephen:
"Have you any special case that you are interested in, Mr. Dallison?"
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.
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