book it seemed, was more valuable than one would have supposed.

“Willingly would I purchase—” began Miss Bartlett.

“Ignore him,” said Mr. Eager sharply, and they all walked rapidly away

from the square.

But an Italian can never be ignored, least of all when he has a

grievance. His mysterious persecution of Mr. Eager became relentless;

the air rang with his threats and lamentations. He appealed to Lucy;

would not she intercede? He was poor—he sheltered a family—the tax on

bread. He waited, he gibbered, he was recompensed, he was dissatisfied,

he did not leave them until he had swept their minds clean of all

thoughts whether pleasant or unpleasant.

Shopping was the topic that now ensued. Under the chaplain’s guidance

they selected many hideous presents and mementoes—florid little

picture-frames that seemed fashioned in gilded pastry; other little

frames, more severe, that stood on little easels, and were carven out

of oak; a blotting book of vellum; a Dante of the same material; cheap

mosaic brooches, which the maids, next Christmas, would never tell from

real; pins, pots, heraldic saucers, brown art-photographs; Eros and

Psyche in alabaster; St. Peter to match—all of which would have cost

less in London.

This successful morning left no pleasant impressions on Lucy. She had

been a little frightened, both by Miss Lavish and by Mr. Eager, she

knew not why. And as they frightened her, she had, strangely enough,

ceased to respect them. She doubted that Miss Lavish was a great

artist. She doubted that Mr. Eager was as full of spirituality and

culture as she had been led to suppose. They were tried by some new

test, and they were found wanting. As for Charlotte—as for Charlotte

she was exactly the same. It might be possible to be nice to her; it

was impossible to love her.

“The son of a labourer; I happen to know it for a fact. A mechanic of

some sort himself when he was young; then he took to writing for the

Socialistic Press. I came across him at Brixton.”

They were talking about the Emersons.

“How wonderfully people rise in these days!” sighed Miss Bartlett,

fingering a model of the leaning Tower of Pisa.

“Generally,” replied Mr. Eager, “one has only sympathy for their

success. The desire for education and for social advance—in these

things there is something not wholly vile. There are some working men

whom one would be very willing to see out here in Florence—little as

they would make of it.”

“Is he a journalist now?” Miss Bartlett asked.

“He is not; he made an advantageous marriage.”

He uttered this remark with a voice full of meaning, and ended with a

sigh.

“Oh, so he has a wife.”

“Dead, Miss Bartlett, dead. I wonder—yes I wonder how he has the

effrontery to look me in the face, to dare to claim acquaintance with

me. He was in my London parish long ago. The other day in Santa Croce,

when he was with Miss Honeychurch, I snubbed him. Let him beware that

he does not get more than a snub.”

“What?” cried Lucy, flushing.

“Exposure!” hissed Mr. Eager.

He tried to change the subject; but in scoring a dramatic point he had

interested his audience more than he had intended. Miss Bartlett was

full of very natural curiosity. Lucy, though she wished never to see

the Emersons again, was not disposed to condemn them on a single word.

“Do you mean,” she asked, “that he is an irreligious man? We know that

already.”

“Lucy, dear—” said Miss Bartlett, gently reproving her cousin’s

penetration.

“I should be astonished if you knew all. The boy—an innocent child at

the time—I will exclude. God knows what his education and his inherited

qualities may have made him.”

“Perhaps,” said Miss Bartlett, “it is something that we had better not

hear.”

“To speak plainly,” said Mr. Eager, “it is. I will say no more.” For

the first time Lucy’s rebellious thoughts swept out in words—for the

first time in her life.

“You have said very little.”

“It was my intention to say very little,” was his frigid reply.

He gazed indignantly at the girl, who met him with equal indignation.

She turned towards him from the shop counter; her breast heaved

quickly. He observed her brow, and the sudden strength of her lips. It

was intolerable that she should disbelieve him.

“Murder, if you want to know,” he cried angrily. “That man murdered his

wife!”

“How?” she retorted.

“To all intents and purposes he murdered her. That day in Santa

Croce—did they say anything against me?”

“Not a word, Mr. Eager—not a single word.”

“Oh, I thought they had been libelling me to you. But I suppose it is

only their personal charms that makes you defend them.”

“I’m not defending them,” said Lucy, losing her courage, and relapsing

into the old chaotic methods. “They’re nothing to me.”

“How could you think she was defending them?” said Miss Bartlett, much

discomfited by the unpleasant scene. The shopman was possibly

listening.

“She will find it difficult. For that man has murdered his wife in the

sight of God.”

The addition of God was striking. But the chaplain was really trying to

qualify a rash remark. A silence followed which might have been

impressive, but was merely awkward. Then Miss Bartlett hastily

purchased the Leaning Tower, and led the way into the street.

“I must be going,” said he, shutting his eyes and taking out his watch.

Miss Bartlett thanked him for his kindness, and spoke with enthusiasm

of the approaching drive.

“Drive? Oh, is our drive to come off?”

Lucy was recalled to her manners, and after a little exertion the

complacency of Mr. Eager was restored.

“Bother the drive!” exclaimed the girl, as soon as he had departed. “It

is just the drive we had arranged with Mr. Beebe without any fuss at

all. Why should he invite us in that absurd manner? We might as well

invite him. We are each paying for ourselves.”

Miss Bartlett, who had intended to lament over the Emersons, was

launched by this remark into unexpected thoughts.

“If that is so, dear—if the drive we and Mr. Beebe are going with Mr.

Eager is really the same as the one we are going with Mr. Beebe, then I

foresee a sad kettle of fish.”

“How?”

“Because Mr. Beebe has asked Eleanor Lavish to come, too.”

“That will mean another carriage.”

“Far worse. Mr. Eager does not like Eleanor. She knows it herself. The

truth must be told; she is too unconventional for him.”

They were now in the newspaper-room at the English bank. Lucy stood by

the central table, heedless of Punch and the Graphic, trying to answer,

or at all events to formulate the questions rioting in her brain. The

well-known world had broken up, and there emerged Florence, a magic

city where people thought and did the most extraordinary things.

Murder, accusations of murder, a lady clinging to one man and being

rude to another—were these the daily incidents of her streets? Was

there more in her frank beauty than met the eye—the power, perhaps, to

evoke passions, good and bad, and to bring them speedily to a

fulfillment?

Happy Charlotte, who, though greatly troubled over things that did not

matter, seemed oblivious to things that did; who could conjecture with

admirable delicacy “where things might lead to,” but apparently lost

sight of the goal as she approached it. Now she was crouching in the

corner trying to extract a circular note from a kind of linen nose-bag

which hung in chaste concealment round her neck. She had been told that

this was the only safe way to carry money in Italy; it must only be

broached within the walls of the English bank. As she groped she

murmured: “Whether it is Mr. Beebe who forgot to tell Mr. Eager, or Mr.

Eager who forgot when he told us, or whether they have decided to leave

Eleanor out altogether—which they could scarcely do—but in any case we

must be prepared. It is you they really want; I am only asked for

appearances. You shall go with the two gentlemen, and I and Eleanor

will follow behind. A one-horse carriage would do for us. Yet how

difficult it is!”

“It is indeed,” replied the girl, with a gravity that sounded

sympathetic.

“What do you think about it?” asked Miss Bartlett, flushed from the

struggle, and buttoning up her dress.

“I don’t know what I think, nor what I want.”

“Oh, dear, Lucy! I do hope Florence isn’t boring you. Speak the word,

and, as you know, I would take you to the ends of the earth to-morrow.”

“Thank you, Charlotte,” said Lucy, and pondered over the offer.

There were letters for her at the bureau—one from her brother, full of

athletics and biology; one from her mother, delightful as only her

mother’s letters could be. She had read in it of the crocuses which had

been bought for yellow and were coming up puce, of the new

parlour-maid, who had watered the ferns with essence of lemonade, of

the semi-detached cottages which were ruining Summer Street, and

breaking the heart of Sir Harry Otway. She recalled the free, pleasant

life of her home, where she was allowed to do everything, and where

nothing ever happened to her. The road up through the pine-woods, the

clean drawing-room, the view over the Sussex Weald—all hung before her

bright and distinct, but pathetic as the pictures in a gallery to

which, after much experience, a traveller returns.

“And the news?” asked Miss Bartlett.

“Mrs. Vyse and her son have gone to Rome,” said Lucy, giving the news

that interested her least. “Do you know the Vyses?”

“Oh, not that way back. We can never have too much of the dear Piazza

Signoria.”

“They’re nice people, the Vyses. So clever—my idea of what’s really

clever. Don’t you long to be in Rome?”

“I die for it!”

The Piazza Signoria is too stony to be brilliant. It has no grass, no

flowers, no frescoes, no glittering walls of marble or comforting

patches of ruddy brick. By an odd chance—unless we believe in a

presiding genius of places—the statues that relieve its severity

suggest, not the innocence of childhood, nor the glorious bewilderment

of youth, but the conscious achievements of maturity. Perseus and

Judith, Hercules and Thusnelda, they have done or suffered something,

and though they are immortal, immortality has come to them after

experience, not before. Here, not only in the solitude of Nature, might

a hero meet a goddess, or a heroine a god.

“Charlotte!” cried the girl suddenly. “Here’s an idea. What if we

popped off to Rome to-morrow—straight to the Vyses’ hotel? For I do

know what I want. I’m sick of Florence. No, you said you’d go to the

ends of the earth! Do! Do!”

Miss Bartlett, with equal vivacity, replied:

“Oh, you droll person! Pray, what would become of your drive in the

hills?”

They passed together through the gaunt beauty of the square, laughing

over the unpractical suggestion.