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