e the
wind was flinging light drifts of smoke athwart the sunlight. They had
chosen this room, not indeed for its view over the condition of the
people, but because of the sky effects at sunset, which were extremely
fine. For the first time, perhaps, Cecilia was conscious that a sample
of the class she was so interested in was exposed to view beneath her
nose. 'The Hughs live somewhere there,' she thought. 'After all I think
B. ought to know about that man. She might speak to father, and get him
to give up having the girl to copy for him--the whole thing's so
worrying.'

In pursuance of this thought, she lunched hastily, and went out, making
her way to Hilary's. With every step she became more uncertain. The
fear of meddling too much, of not meddling enough, of seeming meddlesome;
timidity at touching anything so awkward; distrust, even ignorance, of
her sister's character, which was like, yet so very unlike, her own; a
real itch to get the matter settled, so that nothing whatever should come
of it--all this she felt. She hurried, dawdled, finished the adventure
almost at a run, then told the servant not to announce her. The vision
of Bianca's eyes, while she listened to this tale, was suddenly too much
for Cecilia. She decided to pay a visit to her father first.

Mr. Stone was writing, attired in his working dress--a thick brown
woollen gown, revealing his thin neck above the line of a blue shirt, and
tightly gathered round the waist with tasselled cord; the lower portions
of grey trousers were visible above woollen-slippered feet. His hair
straggled over his thin long ears. The window, wide open, admitted an
east wind; there was no fire. Cecilia shivered.

"Come in quickly," said Mr. Stone. Turning to a big high desk of stained
deal which occupied the middle of one wall, he began methodically to
place the inkstand, a heavy paper-knife, a book, and stones of several
sizes, on his guttering sheets of manuscript.

Cecilia looked about her; she had not been inside her father's room for
several months. There was nothing in it but that desk, a camp bed in the
far corner (with blankets, but no sheets), a folding washstand, and a
narrow bookcase, the books in which Cecilia unconsciously told off on the
fingers of her memory. They never varied. On the top shelf the Bible
and the works of Plautus and Diderot; on the second from the top the
plays of Shakespeare in a blue edition; on the third from the bottom D