"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.