truck with all his force; but the blade of the knife
broke off short against the hidden coat of mail.

Tito insisted that he was welcome to remain there, and said what he
could to soothe him, but Baldassarre would stay no longer when he knew
whose roof covered him. Presently, he armed himself anew, and waited for
another opportunity. He learned all that was to be known of Tito's
career since his arrival in Florence; ascertained that he was married,
and had thoughts of winning his wife's sympathy and telling her of
Tessa. Then one night he contrived to get into the Rucellai Gardens,
where Tito was at supper with a gathering of Florentine notabilities,
and, seized in time and held back from assassinating him, he
passionately denounced him before the company as a scoundrel, a liar,
and a robber.

There were those present who had been on the church steps that day when
Baldassarre had clutched Tito by the arm, and Tito had then explained
away his momentary panic. Questioned now by one of these, he declared
that though when first he encountered his accuser he did not recognise
him, he now saw that he was the servant who years ago accompanied him
and his adoptive father to Greece, and was dismissed on account of
misdemeanours, and that the story of his being rescued from beggary was
the vision of a disordered brain.

Baldassarre was given a chance to prove that he was not the servant, but
the great scholar to whom Tito was indebted for his learning.

"The ring I possess," said Rucellai, "is a fine sard that I myself
purchased from Messer Tito. It is engraved with a subject from Homer.
Will you turn to the passage in Homer from which that subject was
taken?"

But sitting to look over the book, Baldassarre realised that the
sufferings through which he had passed had unhinged his mind and his
memory; the words he stared at had no meaning for him, and he lifted his
hands to his head in despair.

The consequence of this fresh failure was that Baldassarre was cast into
prison, and Tito was at liberty to pursue his political ambitions
unhaunted by that dogging shadow that was to him as the shadow of death.
He managed his affairs so cleverly that whichever party came uppermost
he was secure of favour and money.

But by-and-by the tide began to turn against him. Baldassarre was at
large again, and met Romola and told her not only of his own wrongs, but
of Tessa. She saw Tessa and her two children, and befriended them, and
was