state of life not quite its own. It could create, as from the
scent of an old slipper dogs create their masters.

So Stephen and Cecilia sat, and their butler brought in the bird. It was
a nice one, nourished down in Surrey, and as he cut it into portions the
butler's soul turned sick within him--not because he wanted some himself,
or was a vegetarian, or for any sort of principle, but because he was by
natural gifts an engineer, and deadly tired of cutting up and handing
birds to other people and watching while they ate them. Without a
glimmer of expression on his face he put the portions down before the
persons who, having paid him to do so, could not tell his thoughts.

That same night, after working at a Report on the present Laws of
Bankruptcy, which he was then drawing up, Stephen entered the joint
apartment with excessive caution, having first made all his dispositions,
and, stealing to the bed, slipped into it. He lay there, offering
himself congratulations that he had not awakened Cecilia, and Cecilia,
who was wide awake, knew by his unwonted carefulness that he had come to
some conclusion which he did not wish to impart to her. Devoured,
therefore, by disquiet, she lay sleepless till the clock struck two.

The conclusion to which Stephen had come was this: Having twice gone
through the facts--Hilary's corporeal separation from Bianca
(communicated to him by Cecilia), cause unknowable; Hilary's interest in
the little model, cause unknown; her known poverty; her employment by Mr.
Stone; her tenancy of Mrs. Hughs' room; the latter's outburst to Cecilia;
Hughs' threat; and, finally, the girl's pretty clothes--he had summed it
up as just a common "plant," to which his brother's possibly innocent,
but in any case imprudent, conduct had laid him open. It was a man's
affair. He resolutely tried to look on the whole thing as unworthy of
attention, to feel that nothing would occur. He failed dismally, for
three reasons. First, his inherent love of regularity, of having
everything in proper order; secondly, his ingrained mistrust of and
aversion from Bianca; thirdly, his unavowed conviction, for all his wish
to be sympathetic to them, that the lower classes always wanted something
out of you. It was a question of how much they would want, and whether
it were wise to give them anything. He decided that it would not be wise
at all. What then? Impossible to say. It worried him. He had a natural
horror of any s