ce.

"Difference?" cried Mrs. Honeychurch, suddenly alert. "I don't see any
difference. Fences are fences, especially when they are in the same
place."

"We were speaking of motives," said Cecil, on whom the interruption
jarred.

"My dear Cecil, look here." She spread out her knees and perched her
card-case on her lap. "This is me. That's Windy Corner. The rest of the
pattern is the other people. Motives are all very well, but the fence
comes here."

"We weren't talking of real fences," said Lucy, laughing.

"Oh, I see, dear--poetry."

She leant placidly back. Cecil wondered why Lucy had been amused.

"I tell you who has no 'fences,' as you call them," she said, "and
that's Mr. Beebe."

"A parson fenceless would mean a parson defenceless."

Lucy was slow to follow what people said, but quick enough to detect
what they meant. She missed Cecil's epigram, but grasped the feeling
that prompted it.

"Don't you like Mr. Beebe?" she asked thoughtfully.

"I never said so!" he cried. "I consider him far above the average. I
only denied--" And he swept off on the subject of fences again, and was
brilliant.

"Now, a clergyman that I do hate," said she wanting to say something
sympathetic, "a clergyman that does have fences, and the most dreadful
ones, is Mr. Eager, the English chaplain at Florence. He was truly
insincere--not merely the manner unfortunate. He was a snob, and so
conceited, and he did say such unkind things."

"What sort of things?"

"There was an old man at the Bertolini whom he said had murdered his
wife."

"Perhaps he had."

"No!"

"Why 'no'?"

"He was such a nice old man, I'm sure."

Cecil laughed at her feminine inconsequence.

"Well, I did try to sift the thing. Mr. Eager would never come to the
point. He prefers it vague--said the old man had 'practically' murdered
his wife--had murdered her in the sight of God."

"Hush, dear!" said Mrs. Honeychurch absently. "But isn't it intolerable
that a person whom we're told to imitate should go round spreading
slander? It was, I believe, chiefly owing to him that the old man was
dropped. People pretended he was vulgar, but he certainly wasn't that."

"Poor old man! What was his name?"

"Harris," said Lucy glibly.

"Let's hope that Mrs. Harris there warn't no sich person," said her
mother.

Cecil nodded intelligently.

"Isn't Mr. Eager a parson of the cultured type?" he asked.

"I don't know. I hate him. I've heard him lecture on G