Stephen, close to his hat-rack, felt soreness in his heart. Such blows as Fortune had dealt, and meant to deal him, he had borne, and he could bear, so long as there was nothing in his own manner, or in that of others, to show him they were blows.
Hurriedly depositing his hat, he ran to Cecilia. He still preserved the habit of knocking on her door before he entered, though she had never, so far, answered, “Don't come in!” because she knew his knock. The custom gave, in fact, the measure of his idealism. What he feared, or what he thought he feared, after nineteen years of unchecked entrance, could never have been ascertained; but there it was, that flower of something formal and precise, of something reticent, within his soul.
This time, for once, he did not knock, and found Cecilia hooking up her tea-gown and looking very sweet. She glanced at him with mild surprise.
“What's this, Cis,” he said, “about a baby dead? Thyme's quite upset about it; and your dad's in the drawing-room!”
With the quick instinct that was woven into all her gentle treading, Cecilia's thoughts flew—she could not have told why—first to the little model, then to Mrs. Hughs.
“Dead?” she said. “Oh, poor woman!”
“What woman?” Stephen asked.
“It must be Mrs. Hughs.”
The thought passed darkly through Stephen's mind: 'Those people again! What now?' He did not express it, being neither brutal nor lacking in good taste.
A short silence followed, then Cecilia said suddenly: “Did you say that father was in the drawing-room? There's fillet of beef, Stephen!”