Walk Along the Lung’Arno
The cousins start along the Lung’Arno, where the river that morning is like a lion in strength, voice, and colour. Charlotte leans over the parapet to admire it and delivers her characteristic wish that Freddy and Lucy’s mother could see it too. Lucy fidgets—Charlotte has stopped precisely at the spot Lucy was covertly watching for the Torre del Gallo party. Lucy does not repent her choice: yesterday’s muddle is best avoided by keeping away from George Emerson, even though the Florence itself, with its stones, Loggia, fountain, and tower, seems loaded with ghostly significance.
Meeting Miss Lavish in Piazza Signoria
In the Piazza Signoria the cousins encounter Miss Lavish, who has been there since eight collecting material for a novel based on yesterday’s killing. She proposes a young lady in place of the original five-franc note and outlines a plot of love, murder, abduction, and revenge, promising local colour, humour, and unmerciful treatment of the British tourist. Miss Bartlett warmly congratulates her; Lucy, fearing she is being sized up as the ingénue, is chiefly concerned not to be put into the book.
Mr. Eager’s Hillside Drive Invitation
Mr. Eager, the resident English chaplain, appears and, with much cultural ornament—Baldovinetti, the neglected view at Settignano—invites the cousins to a drive in the hills, up by Fiesole and back by Settignano, with tea at some Renaissance villa implied. An invitation from Eager is a mark of social distinction, since he alone links the migratory tourists with the permanent residential colony. Lucy, whose priorities have shifted, echoes Charlotte’s raptures only faintly until she hears that Mr. Beebe is also to come.
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