“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.”
Cecilia looked at Hilary. “I hardly think—-”
The landlady quickly turned the handles of the doors, showing that they would not open.
“I keep the key,” she said. “There's a bolt on both sides.”
Reassured, Cecilia walked round the room as far as this was possible, for it was practically all furniture. There was the same little wrinkle across her nose as across Thyme's nose when she spoke of Hound Street. Suddenly she caught sight of Hilary. He was standing with his back against the door. On his face was a strange and bitter look, such as a man might have on seeing the face of Ugliness herself, feeling that she was not only without him, but within—a universal spirit; the look of a man who had thought that he was chivalrous, and found that he was not; of a leader about to give an order that he would not himself have executed.
Seeing that look, Cecilia said with some haste:
“It's all very nice and clean; it will do very well, I think. Seven shillings a week, I believe you said. We will take it for a fortnight, at all events.”
The first glimmer of a smile appeared on the landlady's grim face, with its hungry eyes, sweetened by patience.
“When would she be coming in?” she asked.