"I wish Miss Lavish would tell me herself. We started such
friends. But I don't think she ought to have run away with
Baedeker that morning in Santa Croce. Charlotte was most annoyed
at finding me practically alone, and so I couldn't help being a
little annoyed with Miss Lavish."

"The two ladies, at all events, have made it up."

He was interested in the sudden friendship between women so
apparently dissimilar as Miss Bartlett and Miss Lavish. They were
always in each other's company, with Lucy a slighted third. Miss
Lavish he believed he understood, but Miss Bartlett might reveal
unknown depths of strangeness, though not perhaps, of meaning.
Was Italy deflecting her from the path of prim chaperon, which he
had assigned to her at Tunbridge Wells? All his life he had loved
to study maiden ladies; they were his specialty, and his
profession had provided him with ample opportunities for the
work. Girls like Lucy were charming to look at, but Mr. Beebe
was, from rather profound reasons, somewhat chilly in his
attitude towards the other sex, and preferred to be interested
rather than enthralled.

Lucy, for the third time, said that poor Charlotte would be
sopped. The Arno was rising in flood, washing away the traces of
the little carts upon the foreshore. But in the south-west there
had appeared a dull haze of yellow, which might mean better
weather if it did not mean worse. She opened the window to
inspect, and a cold blast entered the room, drawing a plaintive
cry from Miss Catharine Alan, who entered at the same moment by
the door.