It was a family saying that “you never knew which way Charlotte Bartlett would turn.”  She was perfectly pleasant and sensible over Lucy’s adventure, found the abridged account of it quite adequate, and paid suitable tribute to the courtesy of Mr. George Emerson.  She and Miss Lavish had had an adventure also.  They had been stopped at the Dazio coming back, and the young officials there, who seemed impudent and desoeuvre, had tried to search their réticules for provisions.  It might have been most unpleasant.  Fortunately Miss Lavish was a match for any one.

For good or for evil, Lucy was left to face her problem alone.  None of her friends had seen her, either in the Piazza or, later on, by the embankment.  Mr. Beebe, indeed, noticing her startled eyes at dinner-time, had again passed to himself the remark of “Too much Beethoven.”  But he only supposed that she was ready for an adventure, not that she had encountered it.  This solitude oppressed her; she was accustomed to have her thoughts confirmed by others or, at all events, contradicted; it was too dreadful not to know whether she was thinking right or wrong.

At breakfast next morning she took decisive action.  There were two plans between which she had to choose.  Mr. Beebe was walking up to the Torre del Gallo with the Emersons and some American ladies.  Would Miss Bartlett and Miss Honeychurch join the party?  Charlotte declined for herself; she had been there in the rain the previous afternoon.  But she thought it an admirable idea for Lucy, who hated shopping, changing money, fetching letters, and other irksome duties-all of which Miss Bartlett must accomplish this morning and could easily accomplish alone.

“No, Charlotte!” cried the girl, with real warmth.  “It’s very kind of Mr. Beebe, but I am certainly coming with you.  I had much rather.”

“Very well, dear,” said Miss Bartlett, with a faint flush of pleasure that called forth a deep flush of shame on the cheeks of Lucy.  How abominably she behaved to Charlotte, now as always!  But now she should alter.  All morning she would be really nice to her.

She slipped her arm into her cousin’s, and they started off along the Lung’ Arno.  The river was a lion that morning in strength, voice, and colour.  Miss Bartlett insisted on leaning over the parapet to look at it.  She then made her usual remark, which was “How I do wish Freddy and your mother could see this, too!”

Lucy fidgeted; it was tiresome of Charlotte to have stopped exactly where she did.

“Look, Lucia!  Oh, you are watching for the Torre del Gallo party.  I feared you would repent you of your choice.”

Serious as the choice had been, Lucy did not repent.  Yesterday had been a muddle-queer and odd, the kind of thing one could not write down easily on paper-but she had a feeling that Charlotte and her shopping were preferable to George Emerson and the summit of the Torre del Gallo.  Since she could not unravel the tangle, she must take care not to re-enter it.  She could protest sincerely against Miss Bartlett’s insinuations.

But though she had avoided the chief actor, the scenery unfortunately remained.  Charlotte, with the complacency of fate, led her from the river to the Piazza Signoria.  She could not have believed that stones, a Loggia, a fountain, a palace tower, would have such significance.  For a moment she understood the nature of ghosts.

The exact site of the murder was occupied, not by a ghost, but by Miss Lavish, who had the morning newspaper in her hand.  She hailed them briskly.  The dreadful catastrophe of the previous day had given her an idea which she thought would work up into a book.

“Oh, let me congratulate you!” said Miss Bartlett.  “After your despair of yesterday!  What a fortunate thing!”

“Aha!  Miss Honeychurch, come you here I am in luck.  Now, you are to tell me absolutely everything that you saw from the beginning.”  Lucy poked at the ground with her parasol.

“But perhaps you would rather not?”

“I’m sorry-if you could manage without it, I think I would rather not.”

The elder ladies exchanged glances, not of disapproval; it is suitable that a girl should feel deeply.

“It is I who am sorry,” said Miss Lavish “literary hacks are shameless creatures.  I believe there’s no secret of the human heart into which we wouldn’t pry.”

She marched cheerfully to the fountain and back, and did a few calculations in realism.  Then she said that she had been in the Piazza since eight o’clock collecting material.  A good deal of it was unsuitable, but of course one always had to adapt.  The two men had quarrelled over a five-franc note.  For the five-franc note she should substitute a young lady, which would raise the tone of the tragedy, and at the same time furnish an excellent plot.

“What is the heroine’s name?” asked Miss Bartlett.

“Leonora,” said Miss Lavish; her own name was Eleanor.

“I do hope she’s nice.”

That desideratum would not be omitted.

“And what is the plot?”

Love, murder, abduction, revenge, was the plot.  But it all came while the fountain plashed to the satyrs in the morning sun.

“I hope you will excuse me for boring on like this,” Miss Lavish concluded.  “It is so tempting to talk to really sympathetic people.  Of course, this is the barest outline.  There will be a deal of local colouring, descriptions of Florence and the neighbourhood, and I shall also introduce some humorous characters.  And let me give you all fair warning - I intend to be unmerciful to the British tourist.”

“Oh, you wicked woman,” cried Miss Bartlett.  “I am sure you are thinking of the Emersons.”

Miss Lavish gave a Machiavellian smile.

“I confess that in Italy my sympathies are not with my own countrymen.  It is the neglected Italians who attract me, and whose lives I am going to paint so far as I can.  For I repeat and I insist, and I have always held most strongly, that a tragedy such as yesterday’s is not the less tragic because it happened in humble life.”

There was a fitting silence when Miss Lavish had concluded.  Then the cousins wished success to her labours, and walked slowly away across the square.

“She is my idea of a really clever woman,” said Miss Bartlett.  “That last remark struck me as so particularly true.  It should be a most pathetic novel.”

Lucy assented.  At present her great aim was not to get put into it.  Her perceptions this morning were curiously keen, and she believed that Miss Lavish had her on trial for an ingenue.

“She is emancipated, but only in the very best sense of the word,” continued Miss Bartlett slowly.  “None but the superficial would be shocked at her.  We had a long talk yesterday.  She believes in justice and truth and human interest.  She told me also that she has a high opinion of the destiny of woman-Mr. Eager!  Why, how nice!  What a pleasant surprise!”

“Ah, not for me,” said the chaplain blandly, “for I have been watching you and Miss Honeychurch for quite a little time.”

“We were chatting to Miss Lavish.”

His brow contracted.

“So I saw.  Were you indeed?  Andate via! sono occupato!” The last remark was made to a vender of panoramic photographs who was approaching with a courteous smile.  “I am about to venture a suggestion.  Would you and Miss Honeychurch be disposed to join me in a drive some day this week-a drive in the hills?  We might go up by Fiesole and back by Settignano.  There is a point on that road where we could get down and have an hour’s ramble on the hillside.  The view thence of Florence is most beautiful-far better than the hackneyed view of Fiesole.  It is the view that Alessio Baldovinetti is fond of introducing into his pictures.  That man had a decided feeling for landscape.  Decidedly.  But who looks at it to-day?  Ah, the world is too much for us.”

Miss Bartlett had not heard of Alessio Baldovinetti, but she knew that Mr. Eager was no commonplace chaplain.  He was a member of the residential colony who had made Florence their home.  He knew the people who never walked about with Baedekers, who had learnt to take a siesta after lunch, who took drives the pension tourists had never heard of, and saw by private influence galleries which were closed to them.  Living in delicate seclusion, some in furnished flats, others in Renaissance villas on Fiesole’s slope, they read, wrote, studied, and exchanged ideas, thus attaining to that intimate knowledge, or rather perception, of Florence which is denied to all who carry in their pockets the coupons of Cook.

Therefore an invitation from the chaplain was something to be proud of.  Between the two sections of his flock he was often the only link, and it was his avowed custom to select those of his migratory sheep who seemed worthy, and give them a few hours in the pastures of the permanent.  Tea at a Renaissance villa?  Nothing had been said about it yet.  But if it did come to that-how Lucy would enjoy it!

A few days ago and Lucy would have felt the same.  But the joys of life were grouping themselves anew.  A drive in the hills with Mr. Eager and Miss Bartlett-even if culminating in a residential tea-party-was no longer the greatest of them.  She echoed the raptures of Charlotte somewhat faintly.  Only when she heard that Mr. Beebe was also coming did her thanks become more sincere.

“So we shall be a partie carree,” said the chaplain.  “In these days of toil and tumult one has great needs of the country and its message of purity.  Andate via! andate presto, presto!  Ah, the town!  Beautiful as it is, it is the town.”

They assented.

“This very square-so I am told-witnessed yesterday the most sordid of tragedies.  To one who loves the Florence of Dante and Savonarola there is something portentous in such desecration-portentous and humiliating.”

“Humiliating indeed,” said Miss Bartlett.  “Miss Honeychurch happened to be passing through as it happened.  She can hardly bear to speak of it.”  She glanced at Lucy proudly.

“And how came we to have you here?” asked the chaplain paternally.

Miss Bartlett’s recent liberalism oozed away at the question.  “Do not blame her, please, Mr. Eager.  The fault is mine:  I left her unchaperoned.”

“So you were here alone, Miss Honeychurch?” His voice suggested sympathetic reproof but at the same time indicated that a few harrowing details would not be unacceptable.  His dark, handsome face drooped mournfully towards her to catch her reply.

“Practically.”

“One of our pension acquaintances kindly brought her home,” said Miss Bartlett, adroitly concealing the sex of the preserver.

“For her also it must have been a terrible experience.  I trust that neither of you was at all-that it was not in your immediate proximity?”

Of the many things Lucy was noticing to-day, not the least remarkable was this - the ghoulish fashion in which respectable people will nibble after blood.  George Emerson had kept the subject strangely pure.

“He died by the fountain, I believe,” was her reply.

“And you and your friend-

“Were over at the Loggia.”

“That must have saved you much.  You have not, of course, seen the disgraceful illustrations which the gutter Press-This man is a public nuisance; he knows that I am a resident perfectly well, and yet he goes on worrying me to buy his vulgar views.”

Surely the vendor of photographs was in league with Lucy-in the eternal league of Italy with youth.  He had suddenly extended his book before Miss Bartlett and Mr. Eager, binding their hands together by a long glossy ribbon of churches, pictures, and views.

“This is too much!” cried the chaplain, striking petulantly at one of Fra Angelico’s angels.  She tore.  A shrill cry rose from the vendor.  The 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.

Chapter VI - The Reverend Arthur Beebe, the Reverend Cuthbert Eager, Mr. Emerson, Mr. George Emerson, Miss Eleanor Lavish, Miss Charlotte Bartlett, and Miss Lucy Honeychurch Drive Out in Carriages to See a View; Italians Drive Them.

It was Phaethon who drove them to Fiesole that memorable day, a youth all irresponsibility and fire, recklessly urging his master’s horses up the stony hill.  Mr. Beebe recognized him at once.  Neither the Ages of Faith nor the Age of Doubt had touched him; he was Phaethon in Tuscany driving a cab.  And it was Persephone whom he asked leave to pick up on the way, saying that she was his sister-Persephone, tall and slender and pale, returning with the Spring to her mother’s cottage, and still shading her eyes from the unaccustomed light.  To her Mr. Eager objected, saying that here was the thin edge of the wedge, and one must guard against imposition.  But the ladies interceded, and when it had been made clear that it was a very great favour, the goddess was allowed to mount beside the god.

Phaethon at once slipped the left rein over her head, thus enabling himself to drive with his arm round her waist.  She did not mind.  Mr. Eager, who sat with his back to the horses, saw nothing of the indecorous proceeding, and continued his conversation with Lucy.  The other two occupants of the carriage were old Mr. Emerson and Miss Lavish.  For a dreadful thing had happened - Mr. Beebe, without consulting Mr. Eager, had doubled the size of the party.  And though Miss Bartlett and Miss Lavish had planned all the morning how the people were to sit, at the critical moment when the carriages came round they lost their heads, and Miss Lavish got in with Lucy, while Miss Bartlett, with George Emerson and Mr. Beebe, followed on behind.

It was hard on the poor chaplain to have his partie carree thus transformed.  Tea at a Renaissance villa, if he had ever meditated it, was now impossible.  Lucy and Miss Bartlett had a certain style about them, and Mr. Beebe, though unreliable, was a man of parts.  But a shoddy lady writer and a journalist who had murdered his wife in the sight of God-they should enter no villa at his introduction.

Lucy, elegantly dressed in white, sat erect and nervous amid these explosive ingredients, attentive to Mr. Eager, repressive towards Miss Lavish, watchful of old Mr. Emerson, hitherto fortunately asleep, thanks to a heavy lunch and the drowsy atmosphere of Spring.  She looked on the expedition as the work of Fate.  But for it she would have avoided George Emerson successfully.  In an open manner he had shown that he wished to continue their intimacy.  She had refused, not because she disliked him, but because she did not know what had happened, and suspected that he did know.  And this frightened her.

For the real event-whatever it was-had taken place, not in the Loggia, but by the river.  To behave wildly at the sight of death is pardonable.  But to discuss it afterwards, to pass from discussion into silence, and through silence into sympathy, that is an error, not of a startled emotion, but of the whole fabric.  There was really something blameworthy (she thought) in their joint contemplation of the shadowy stream, in the common impulse which had turned them to the house without the passing of a look or word.  This sense of wickedness had been slight at first.  She had nearly joined the party to the Torre del Gallo.  But each time that she avoided George it became more imperative that she should avoid him again.  And now celestial irony, working through her cousin and two clergymen, did not suffer her to leave Florence till she had made this expedition with him through the hills.

Meanwhile Mr. Eager held her in civil converse; their little tiff was over.

“So, Miss Honeychurch, you are travelling?  As a student of art?”

“Oh, dear me, no-oh, no!”

“Perhaps as a student of human nature,” interposed Miss Lavish, “like myself?”

“Oh, no.  I am here as a tourist.”

“Oh, indeed,” said Mr. Eager.  “Are you indeed?  If you will not think me rude, we residents sometimes pity you poor tourists not a little-handed about like a parcel of goods from Venice to Florence, from Florence to Rome, living herded together in pensions or hotels, quite unconscious of anything that is outside Baedeker, their one anxiety to get ‘done’ or ‘through’ and go on somewhere else.  The result is, they mix up towns, rivers, palaces in one inextricable whirl.  You know the American girl in Punch who says - ‘Say, poppa, what did we see at Rome?’ And the father replies:  ‘Why, guess Rome was the place where we saw the yaller dog.’  There’s travelling for you.  Ha! ha! ha!”

“I quite agree,” said Miss Lavish, who had several times tried to interrupt his mordant wit.  “The narrowness and superficiality of the Anglo-Saxon tourist is nothing less than a menace.”

“Quite so.  Now, the English colony at Florence, Miss Honeychurch-and it is of considerable size, though, of course, not all equally-a few are here for trade, for example.  But the greater part are students.  Lady Helen Laverstock is at present busy over Fra Angelico.  I mention her name because we are passing her villa on the left.  No, you can only see it if you stand-no, do not stand; you will fall.  She is very proud of that thick hedge.  Inside, perfect seclusion.  One might have gone back six hundred years.  Some critics believe that her garden was the scene of The Decameron, which lends it an additional interest, does it not?”

“It does indeed!” cried Miss Lavish.  “Tell me, where do they place the scene of that wonderful seventh day?”

But Mr. Eager proceeded to tell Miss Honeychurch that on the right lived Mr. Someone Something, an American of the best type-so rare!-and that the Somebody Elses were farther down the hill.  “Doubtless you know her monographs in the series of ‘Mediaeval Byways’?  He is working at Gemistus Pletho.  Sometimes as I take tea in their beautiful grounds I hear, over the wall, the electric tram squealing up the new road with its loads of hot, dusty, unintelligent tourists who are going to ‘do’ Fiesole in an hour in order that they may say they have been there, and I think-think-I think how little they think what lies so near them.”

During this speech the two figures on the box were sporting with each other disgracefully.  Lucy had a spasm of envy.  Granted that they wished to misbehave, it was pleasant for them to be able to do so.  They were probably the only people enjoying the expedition.  The carriage swept with agonizing jolts up through the Piazza of Fiesole and into the Settignano road.

“Piano! piano!” said Mr. Eager, elegantly waving his hand over his head.

“Va bene, signore, va bene, va bene,” crooned the driver, and whipped his horses up again.

Now Mr. Eager and Miss Lavish began to talk against each other on the subject of Alessio Baldovinetti.  Was he a cause of the Renaissance, or was he one of its manifestations?  The other carriage was left behind.  As the pace increased to a gallop the large, slumbering form of Mr. Emerson was thrown against the chaplain with the regularity of a machine.

“Piano! piano!” said he, with a martyred look at Lucy.

An extra lurch made him turn angrily in his seat.  Phaethon, who for some time had been endeavouring to kiss Persephone, had just succeeded.

A little scene ensued, which, as Miss Bartlett said afterwards, was most unpleasant.  The horses were stopped, the lovers were ordered to disentangle themselves, the boy was to lose his pourboire, the girl was immediately to get down.

“She is my sister,” said he, turning round on them with piteous eyes.

Mr. Eager took the trouble to tell him that he was a liar.

Phaethon hung down his head, not at the matter of the accusation, but at its manner.  At this point Mr. Emerson, whom the shock of stopping had awoke, declared that the lovers must on no account be separated, and patted them on the back to signify his approval.  And Miss Lavish, though unwilling to ally him, felt bound to support the cause of Bohemianism.

“Most certainly I would let them be,” she cried.  “But I dare say I shall receive scant support.  I have always flown in the face of the conventions all my life.  This is what I call an adventure.”

“We must not submit,” said Mr. Eager.  “I knew he was trying it on.  He is treating us as if we were a party of Cook’s tourists.”

“Surely no!” said Miss Lavish, her ardour visibly decreasing.

The other carriage had drawn up behind, and sensible Mr. Beebe called out that after this warning the couple would be sure to behave themselves properly.

“Leave them alone,” Mr. Emerson begged the chaplain, of whom he stood in no awe.  “Do we find happiness so often that we should turn it off the box when it happens to sit there?  To be driven by lovers-A king might envy us, and if we part them it’s more like sacrilege than anything I know.”

Here the voice of Miss Bartlett was heard saying that a crowd had begun to collect.

Mr. Eager, who suffered from an over-fluent tongue rather than a resolute will, was determined to make himself heard.  He addressed the driver again.  Italian in the mouth of Italians is a deep-voiced stream, with unexpected cataracts and boulders to preserve it from monotony.  In Mr. Eager’s mouth it resembled nothing so much as an acid whistling fountain which played ever higher and higher, and quicker and quicker, and more and more shrilly, till abruptly it was turned off with a click.

“Signorina!” said the man to Lucy, when the display had ceased.  Why should he appeal to Lucy?

“Signorina!” echoed Persephone in her glorious contralto.  She pointed at the other carriage.  Why?

For a moment the two girls looked at each other.  Then Persephone got down from the box.

“Victory at last!” said Mr. Eager, smiting his hands together as the carriages started again.

“It is not victory,” said Mr. Emerson.  “It is defeat.  You have parted two people who were happy.”

Mr. Eager shut his eyes.  He was obliged to sit next to Mr. Emerson, but he would not speak to him.  The old man was refreshed by sleep, and took up the matter warmly.  He commanded Lucy to agree with him; he shouted for support to his son.

“We have tried to buy what cannot be bought with money.  He has bargained to drive us, and he is doing it.  We have no rights over his soul.”

Miss Lavish frowned.  It is hard when a person you have classed as typically British speaks out of his character.

“He was not driving us well,” she said.  “He jolted us.”

“That I deny.  It was as restful as sleeping.  Aha! he is jolting us now.  Can you wonder?  He would like to throw us out, and most certainly he is justified.  And if I were superstitious I’d be frightened of the girl, too.  It doesn’t do to injure young people.  Have you ever heard of Lorenzo de Medici?”

Miss Lavish bristled.

“Most certainly I have.  Do you refer to Lorenzo il Magnifico, or to Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, or to Lorenzo surnamed Lorenzino on account of his diminutive stature?”

“The Lord knows.  Possibly he does know, for I refer to Lorenzo the poet.  He wrote a line-so I heard yesterday-which runs like this - ’Don’t go fighting against the Spring.’”

Mr. Eager could not resist the opportunity for erudition.

“Non fate guerra al Maggio,” he murmured. “‘War not with the May’ would render a correct meaning.”

“The point is, we have warred with it.  Look.”  He pointed to the Val d’Arno, which was visible far below them, through the budding trees.  “Fifty miles of Spring, and we’ve come up to admire them.  Do you suppose there’s any difference between Spring in nature and Spring in man?  But there we go, praising the one and condemning the other as improper, ashamed that the same work eternally through both.”

No one encouraged him to talk.  Presently Mr. Eager gave a signal for the carriages to stop and marshalled the party for their ramble on the hill.  A hollow like a great amphitheatre, full of terraced steps and misty olives, now lay between them and the heights of Fiesole, and the road, still following its curve, was about to sweep on to a promontory which stood out in the plain.  It was this promontory, uncultivated, wet, covered with bushes and occasional trees, which had caught the fancy of Alessio Baldovinetti nearly five hundred years before.  He had ascended it, that diligent and rather obscure master, possibly with an eye to business, possibly for the joy of ascending.  Standing there, he had seen that view of the Val d’Arno and distant Florence, which he afterwards had introduced not very effectively into his work.  But where exactly had he stood?  That was the question which Mr. Eager hoped to solve now.  And Miss Lavish, whose nature was attracted by anything problematical, had become equally enthusiastic.

But it is not easy to carry the pictures of Alessio Baldovinetti in your head, even if you have remembered to look at them before starting.  And the haze in the valley increased the difficulty of the quest.

The party sprang about from tuft to tuft of grass, their anxiety to keep together being only equalled by their desire to go different directions.  Finally they split into groups.  Lucy clung to Miss Bartlett and Miss Lavish; the Emersons returned to hold laborious converse with the drivers; while the two clergymen, who were expected to have topics in common, were left to each other.

The two elder ladies soon threw off the mask.  In the audible whisper that was now so familiar to Lucy they began to discuss, not Alessio Baldovinetti, but the drive.  Miss Bartlett had asked Mr. George Emerson what his profession was, and he had answered “the railway.”  She was very sorry that she had asked him.  She had no idea that it would be such a dreadful answer, or she would not have asked him.  Mr. Beebe had turned the conversation so cleverly, and she hoped that the young man was not very much hurt at her asking him.

“The railway!” gasped Miss Lavish.  “Oh, but I shall die!  Of course it was the railway!” She could not control her mirth.  “He is the image of a porter-on, on the South-Eastern.”

“Eleanor, be quiet,” plucking at her vivacious companion.  “Hush!  They’ll hear-the Emersons-

“I can’t stop.  Let me go my wicked way.  A porter-

“Eleanor!”

“I’m sure it’s all right,” put in Lucy.  “The Emersons won’t hear, and they wouldn’t mind if they did.”

Miss Lavish did not seem pleased at this.

“Miss Honeychurch listening!” she said rather crossly.  “Pouf!  Wouf!  You naughty girl!  Go away!”

“Oh, Lucy, you ought to be with Mr. Eager, I’m sure.”

“I can’t find them now, and I don’t want to either.”

“Mr. Eager will be offended.  It is your party.”

“Please, I’d rather stop here with you.”

“No, I agree,” said Miss Lavish.  “It’s like a school feast; the boys have got separated from the girls.  Miss Lucy, you are to go.  We wish to converse on high topics unsuited for your ear.”

The girl was stubborn.  As her time at Florence drew to its close she was only at ease amongst those to whom she felt indifferent.  Such a one was Miss Lavish, and such for the moment was Charlotte.  She wished she had not called attention to herself; they were both annoyed at her remark and seemed determined to get rid of her.

“How tired one gets,” said Miss Bartlett.  “Oh, I do wish Freddy and your mother could be here.”

Unselfishness with Miss Bartlett had entirely usurped the functions of enthusiasm.  Lucy did not look at the view either.  She would not enjoy anything till she was safe at Rome.

“Then sit you down,” said Miss Lavish.  “Observe my foresight.”

With many a smile she produced two of those mackintosh squares that protect the frame of the tourist from damp grass or cold marble steps.  She sat on one; who was to sit on the other?

“Lucy; without a moment’s doubt, Lucy.  The ground will do for me.  Really I have not had rheumatism for years.  If I do feel it coming on I shall stand.  Imagine your mother’s feelings if I let you sit in the wet in your white linen.”  She sat down heavily where the ground looked particularly moist.  “Here we are, all settled delightfully.  Even if my dress is thinner it will not show so much, being brown.  Sit down, dear; you are too unselfish; you don’t assert yourself enough.”  She cleared her throat.  “Now don’t be alarmed; this isn’t a cold.  It’s the tiniest cough, and I have had it three days.  It’s nothing to do with sitting here at all.”

There was only one way of treating the situation.  At the end of five minutes Lucy departed in search of Mr. Beebe and Mr. Eager, vanquished by the mackintosh square.

She addressed herself to the drivers, who were sprawling in the carriages, perfuming the cushions with cigars.  The miscreant, a bony young man scorched black by the sun, rose to greet her with the courtesy of a host and the assurance of a relative.

“Dove?” said Lucy, after much anxious thought.

His face lit up.  Of course he knew where, Not so far either.  His arm swept three-fourths of the horizon.  He should just think he did know where.  He pressed his finger-tips to his forehead and then pushed them towards her, as if oozing with visible extract of knowledge.

More seemed necessary.  What was the Italian for “clergyman”?

“Dove buoni uomini?” said she at last.

Good?  Scarcely the adjective for those noble beings!  He showed her his cigar.

“Uno-piú-piccolo,” was her next remark, implying “Has the cigar been given to you by Mr. Beebe, the smaller of the two good men?”

She was correct as usual.  He tied the horse to a tree, kicked it to make it stay quiet, dusted the carriage, arranged his hair, remoulded his hat, encouraged his moustache, and in rather less than a quarter of a minute was ready to conduct her.  Italians are born knowing the way.  It would seem that the whole earth lay before them, not as a map, but as a chess-board, whereon they continually behold the changing pieces as well as the squares.  Any one can find places, but the finding of people is a gift from God.

He only stopped once, to pick her some great blue violets.  She thanked him with real pleasure.  In the company of this common man the world was beautiful and direct.  For the first time she felt the influence of Spring.  His arm swept the horizon gracefully; violets, like other things, existed in great profusion there; “would she like to see them?”

“Ma buoni uomini.”

He bowed.  Certainly.  Good men first, violets afterwards.  They proceeded briskly through the undergrowth, which became thicker and thicker.  They were nearing the edge of the promontory, and the view was stealing round them, but the brown network of the bushes shattered it into countless pieces.  He was occupied in his cigar, and in holding back the pliant boughs.  She was rejoicing in her escape from dullness.  Not a step, not a twig, was unimportant to her.

“What is that?”

There was a voice in the wood, in the distance behind them.  The voice of Mr. Eager?  He shrugged his shoulders.  An Italian’s ignorance is sometimes more remarkable than his knowledge.  She could not make him understand that perhaps they had missed the clergymen.  The view was forming at last; she could discern the river, the golden plain, other hills.

“Eccolo!” he exclaimed.

At the same moment the ground gave way, and with a cry she fell out of the wood.  Light and beauty enveloped her.  She had fallen on to a little open terrace, which was covered with violets from end to end.

“Courage!” cried her companion, now standing some six feet above.  “Courage and love.”

She did not answer.  From her feet the ground sloped sharply into view, and violets ran down in rivulets and streams and cataracts, irrigating the hillside with blue, eddying round the tree stems collecting into pools in the hollows, covering the grass with spots of azure foam.  But never again were they in such profusion; this terrace was the well-head, the primal source whence beauty gushed out to water the earth.

Standing at its brink, like a swimmer who prepares, was the good man.  But he was not the good man that she had expected, and he was alone.

George had turned at the sound of her arrival.  For a moment he contemplated her, as one who had fallen out of heaven.  He saw radiant joy in her face, he saw the flowers beat against her dress in blue waves.  The bushes above them closed.  He stepped quickly forward and kissed her.

Before she could speak, almost before she could feel, a voice called, “Lucy!  Lucy!  Lucy!” The silence of life had been broken by Miss Bartlett who stood brown against the view.