It had come into her mind at once.

The whole affair disturbed her ideals of virtue and good taste--that particular mental atmosphere mysteriously, inevitably woven round the soul by the conditions of special breeding and special life.
If, then, this affair were real it was sordid, and if it were sordid it was repellent to suppose that her family could be mixed up in it; but her people were mixed up in it, therefore it must be--nonsense! So the matter rested until Thyme came back from her visit to her grandfather, and told them of the little model's new and pretty clothes.
When she detailed this news they were all sitting at dinner, over the ordering of which Cecilia's loyalty had been taxed till her little headache came, so that there might be nothing too conventional to over-nourish Stephen or so essentially aesthetic as not to nourish him at all.

The man servant being in the room, they neither of them raised their eyes.

But when he was gone to fetch the bird, each found the other looking furtively across the table.

By some queer misfortune the word "sordid" had leaped into their minds again.