Neither speaking nor moving, they were looking out before them at the traffic; and something in Cecilia revolted at this sight.

It was lifeless, hopeless, unaesthetic.
"What can one do," she thought, "for women like Mrs.Hughs, who always look like that?
And that poor old man! I suppose I oughtn't to have bought that dress, but Stephen is tired of this." She turned out of the main street into a road preserved from commoner forms of traffic, and stopped at a long low house half hidden behind the trees of its front garden.
It was the residence of Hilary Dallison, her husband's brother, and himself the husband of Bianca, her own sister.
The queer conceit came to Cecilia that it resembled Hilary.

Its look was kindly and uncertain; its colour a palish tan; the eyebrows of its windows rather straight than arched, and those deep-set eyes, the windows, twinkled hospitably; it had, as it were, a sparse moustache and beard of creepers, and dark marks here and there, like the lines and shadows on the faces of those who think too much.

Beside it, and apart, though connected by a passage, a studio stood, and about that studio--of white rough-cast, with a black oak door, and peacock-blue paint--was something a little hard and fugitive, well suited to Bianca, who used it, indeed, to paint in.

It seemed to stand, with its eyes on the house, shrinking defiantly from too close company, as though it could not entirely give itself to anything.