Then Bianca spoke: "Well ?" That word, like nearly all her speeches, seemed rather to disconcert her hearers.
"So Hughs ill-treats her ?" said Hilary.
"She says so," replied Cecilia--"at least, that's what I understood.

Of course, I don't know any details." "She had better get rid of him, I should think," Bianca murmured.
Out of the silence that followed Thyme's clear voice was heard saying: "She can't get a divorce; she could get a separation." Cecilia rose uneasily.

These words concreted suddenly a wealth of half-acknowledged doubts about her little daughter.

This came of letting her hear people talk, and go about with Martin! She might even have been listening to her grandfather--such a thought was most disturbing.

And, afraid, on the one hand, of gainsaying the liberty of speech, and, on the other, of seeming to approve her daughter's knowledge of the world, she looked at her husband.
But Stephen did not speak, feeling, no doubt, that to pursue the subject would be either to court an ethical, even an abstract, disquisition, and this one did not do in anybody's presence, much less one's wife's or daughter's; or to touch on sordid facts of doubtful character, which was equally distasteful in the circumstances.