fitted for
slipping into any nest he fixes his mind on."

_III.--The Man who was Wronged_

It was undeniable that Tito's coming had been the dawn of a new life for
both father and daughter, and he grew to care for Romola supremely--to
wish to have her for his beautiful and loving wife.

He took her place as Bardo's assistant, and served him with an easy
efficiency that had been beyond her; and she, happier in her father's
happiness, had given her love to Tito even before he ventured to offer
her his own. He was thus sailing under the fairest breeze, and besides
convincing fair judges that his talents squared with his good fortune,
he wore that fortune so unpretentiously that no one seemed to be
offended by it.

And that was not the whole of Tito's good fortune, for he had sold his
jewels, and was master of full five hundred gold florins. Yet the moment
when he first had this sum in his possession was the crisis of the first
serious struggle his facile, good-humoured nature had known.

"A man's ransom!" Who was it that had said five hundred florins was more
than a man's ransom? If, now, under this mid-day sun, on some hot coast
far away, a man somewhat stricken in years--a man not without high
thoughts, and with the most passionate heart--a man who long years ago
had rescued a little boy from a life of beggary, filth, and cruel wrong,
and had reared him tenderly, if that man were now, under this summer
sun, toiling as a slave, hewing wood and drawing water? If he were
saying to himself, "Tito will find me. He had but to carry our gems to
Venice; he will have raised money, and will never rest till he finds me
out?" If that were certain, could he--Tito--see the price of the gems
lying before him, and say, "I will stay at Florence, where I am fanned
by soft airs of love and prosperity; I will not risk myself for his
sake?" No, surely not _if it were certain_. But the galley had been
taken by a Turkish vessel; that was known by the report of the companion
galley which had escaped; and there had been resistance and probable
bloodshed, a man had been seen falling overboard.

He quieted his conscience with such reasonings as these, and when
definite tidings reached him that his father was still a prisoner, he
contrived to keep the knowledge to himself, and still did nothing. The
death of the exhausted, emaciated monk who had brought these tidings
freed him of one fear; but this monk was Romola's brother, Dino, and
ob