"How's your sister?" And
seeing Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, he added: "How do you do? We met the
other day."

"We did," said Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, whose little eyes were
sparkling. "We talked about the poor, do you remember?"

Mr. Purcey, a sensitive man if you could get through his skin, gave her
a shrewd look. 'I don't quite cotton to this woman,' he seemed saying;
'there's a laugh about her I don't like.'

"Ah! yes--you were tellin' me about them."

"Oh, Mr. Purcey, but you had heard of them, you remember!"

Mr. Purcey made a movement of his face which caused it to seem all
jaw. It was a sort of unconscious declaration of a somewhat formidable
character. So one may see bulldogs, those amiable animals, suddenly
disclose their tenacity.

"It's rather a blue subject," he said bluntly.

Something in Cecilia fluttered at those words. It was like the saying of
a healthy man looking at a box of pills which he did not mean to open.
Why could not she and Stephen keep that lid on, too? And at this moment,
to her deep astonishment, Stephen entered. She had sent for him, it is
true, but had never expected he would come.

His entrance, indeed, requires explanation.

Feeling, as he said, a little "off colour," Stephen had not gone to
Richmond to play golf. He had spent the day instead in the company of
his pipe and those ancient coins, of which he had the best collection of
any man he had ever met. His thoughts had wandered from them, more
than he thought proper, to Hilary and that girl. He had felt from the
beginning that he was so much more the man to deal with an affair like
this than poor old Hilary. When, therefore, Thyme put her head into
his study and said, "Father, Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace!" he had first
thought, 'That busybody!' and then, 'I wonder--perhaps I'd better go and
see if I can get anything out of her.'

In considering Stephen's attitude towards a woman so firmly embedded in
the various social movements of the day, it must be remembered that he
represented that large class of men who, unhappily too cultivated to
put aside, like Mr. Purcey, all blue subjects, or deny the need for
movements to make them less blue, still could not move, for fear of
being out of order. He was also temperamentally distrustful of anything
too feminine; and Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace was undoubtedly extremely
feminine. Her merit, in his eyes, consisted of her attachment to
Societies. So long as mankind worked through Societ