itical 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 residen