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Updated: June 6, 2025
There was a low stool against Tito's chair, and that was Romola's habitual seat when they were talking together. She rested her arm on his knee, as she used to do on her father's, and looked up at him while he spoke. He had never yet noticed the presence of the portrait, and she had not mentioned it thinking of it all the more.
Romola's face saddened, but she checked herself, and said, cheerfully, "You would not guess where I went to-day, Tito. I went to the Duomo, to hear Fra Girolamo." Tito looked startled; he had immediately thought of Baldassarre's entrance into the Duomo; but Romola gave his look another meaning. "You are surprised, are you not? It was a sudden thought.
Baldassarre had become dreamy again, and sank into silence, resting his head between his hands; and again Romola's belief in him had submerged all cautioning doubts. The pity with which she dwelt on his words seemed like the revival of an old pang. Had she not daily seen how her father missed Dino and the future he had dreamed of in that son?
"You know I am making the catalogue on the new plan that my father wished for; you have not time to help me, so I must work at it closely." Tito, instead of meeting Romola's glance, closed his eyes and rubbed his hands over his face and hair. He felt he was behaving unlike himself, but he would make amends to-morrow.
He turned, and saw the face of his adoptive father, Baldassarre Calvo, close to his own. The two men looked at each other silent as death; Tito with cheeks and lips all bloodless, fascinated by terror. The next instant the grasp on his arm relaxed, and Baldassarre disappeared within the church. IV. Romola's Ordeal With Baldassarre lurking in Florence, Tito went in hourly fear.
And now Romola's best support under that supreme woman's sorrow had slipped away from her.
He was about to take a step which he knew would arouse her deep indignation; he would have to encounter much that was unpleasant before he could win her forgiveness. And Tito could never find it easy to face displeasure and anger; his nature was one of those most remote from defiance or impudence, and all his inclinations leaned towards preserving Romola's tenderness.
There was only an instant for Romola's eyes to take in that still scene; for Lillo snatched his hand away from her and ran up to his mother's side, not making any direct effort to wake her, but only leaning his head back against her arm, and surveying Romola seriously from that distance.
Tessa, who had hitherto been occupied in coaxing Ninna out of her waking peevishness, now sat down in her low chair, near Romola's knee, arranging Ninna's tiny person to advantage, jealous that the strange lady too seemed to notice the boy most, as Naldo did. "Lillo was going to be angry with me, because I sat in Babbo's chair," said Romola, as she bent forward to kiss Ninna's little foot.
Romola's astonishment could hardly have been greater if the stranger had worn a panther-skin and carried a thyrsus, for the cunning barber had said nothing of the Greeks age or appearance, and among her father's scholarly visitors she had hardly ever seen any but gray-headed men.
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