t he might gather news,
while she went up to the loggia from time to time to try and discern any
signs of the dreaded entrance having been made, or of its having been
effectively repelled. Maso brought her word that the great Piazza was
full of armed men, and that many of the chief citizens suspected as
friends of the Medici had been summoned to the palace and detained
there. Some of the people seemed not to mind whether Piero got in or
not, and some said the Signoria itself had invited him; but however that
might be, they were giving him an ugly welcome; and the soldiers from
Pisa were coming against him.

In her memory of those morning hours, there were not many things that
Romola could distinguish as actual external experiences standing
markedly out above the tumultuous waves of retrospect and anticipation.
She knew that she had really walked to the Badia by the appointed time
in spite of street alarms; she knew that she had waited there in vain.
And the scene she had witnessed when she came out of the church, and
stood watching on the steps while the doors were being closed behind her
for the afternoon interval, always came back to her like a remembered
waking.

There was a change in the faces and tones of the people, armed and
unarmed, who were pausing or hurrying along the streets. The guns were
firing again, but the sound only provoked laughter. She soon knew the
cause of the change. Piero de' Medici and his horsemen had turned their
backs on Florence, and were galloping as fast as they could along the
Siena road. She learned this from a substantial shop-keeping Piagnone,
who had not yet laid down his pike.

"It is true," he ended, with a certain bitterness in his emphasis.
"Piero is gone, but there are those left behind who were in the secret
of his coming--we all know that; and if the new Signoria does its duty
we shall soon know who they are."

The words darted through Romola like a sharp spasm; but the evil they
foreshadowed was not yet close upon her, and as she entered her home
again, her most pressing anxiety was the possibility that she had lost
sight for a long while of Baldassarre.

CHAPTER FIFTY FIVE.

WAITING.

The lengthening sunny days went on without bringing either what Romola
most desired or what she most dreaded. They brought no sign from
Baldassarre, and, in spite of special watch on the part of the
Government, no revelation of the suspected conspiracy. But they brought
ot