She felt more in common with animals and dead artists — they’d been to the room by the Spanish Steps in Rome where Keats died — than with her family and the business of travel. Her mother fussed over increasing numbers of hatboxes and trunks, and her father, energetic all day, nodded off during after-dinner coffee. In Rome she was the only one with enough sand to stay up late, balcony doors open, waiting to hear a nightingale. Arthur was disappearing at intervals.

In Paris he had taken long excursions alone, sometimes coming in after dinner. I got completely lost, he’d say, which Mr. Eliot believed, finding no logic in the layout of European cities, but which Lilian, knowing him better, did not. Once she saw him shake confetti out of his hat brim. Now in Rome he would absent himself from lunch at a cafe and appear across the piazza — Mr. and Mrs. Eliot were not noticing — sharing a cigarette with a mustached fellow he seemed to know. Then there were the two women in fishnet stockings who drifted away from him when Lilian called from the top of the steps near the Borghese Gardens.

Look what we spend to feed her, said Mrs. Eliot with her back to the wide view of blue hills rising up from Lago di Como. And the horrid little thing gets no fatter. They were on the last leg of their trip in the northern lakes.

Lilian smiled lamely.

People eat too much, said Mr. Eliot. We could all live just as happily on bread and water. Before him on the table was a bowl of brown wheat.

Not me, said Arthur. He behaved as if he were accidentally placed with these people for breakfast.

Mrs. Eliot was watching with interest the other guests of the hotel. Well, our little jewel is not eating enough. She’ll be a little wisp of a thing when she gets back to Mr. Finch.

Lilian smiled at the mention of Gilbert’s name.

I’ve a wonderful five-mile walk today, Mr. Eliot said, and pressed a folded map near his plate.

Your wedding dress will be swimming on you, said Mrs. Eliot, but she was finding something interesting in the new arrivals. There’s that little French man with the peculiar habits, she said. Lilian turned to see a man with a young woman on either arm.

They are most likely his daughters, said Mr. Eliot, frowning at his wife. Margaret, he warned.

Arthur observed them through his drooping lids. Stop staring, said Mrs. Eliot. Arthur ignored her.

It goes around the lake and there’s a little place where they’ll give you lunch, Mr. Eliot said.

I’d like to shoot, Arthur said.

I think we can manage that.

I have a church I want to see, Mrs. Eliot said.

Here? Lilian said. Her mother did not answer.

You have your choice, Lilian, said her father. Path or parish.