er to seek these beings; she needed something that she was
bound specially to care for; she yearned to clasp the children and to
make them love her. This at least would be some sweet result, for
others as well as herself, from all her past sorrow. It appeared there
was much property of Tito's to which she had a claim; but she distrusted
the cleanness of that money, and she had determined to make it all over
to the State, except so much as was equal to the price of her father's
library. This would be enough for the modest support of Tessa and the
children. But Monna Brigida threw such planning into the background by
clamorously insisting that Romola must live with her and never forsake
her till she had seen her safe in Paradise--else why had she persuaded
her to turn Piagnone?--and if Romola wanted to rear other people's
children, she, Monna Brigida, must rear them too. Only they must be
found first.

Romola felt the full force of that innuendo. But strong feeling
unsatisfied is never without its superstition, either of hope or
despair. Romola's was the superstition of hope: _somehow_ she was to
find that mother and the children. And at last another direction for
active inquiry suggested itself. She learned that Tito had provided
horses and mules to await him in San Gallo; he was therefore going to
leave Florence by the gate of San Gallo, and she determined, though
without much confidence in the issue, to try and ascertain from the
gatekeepers if they had observed any one corresponding to the
description of Tessa with her children, to have passed the gates before
the morning of the ninth of April. Walking along the Via San Gallo, and
looking watchfully about her through her long widow's veil, lest she
should miss any object that might aid her, she descried Bratti
chaffering with a customer. That roaming man, she thought, might aid
her: she would not mind talking of Tessa to _him_. But as she put aside
her veil and crossed the street towards him, she saw something hanging
from the corner of his basket which made her heart leap with a much
stronger hope.

"Bratti, my friend," she said abruptly, "where did you get that
necklace?"

"Your servant, madonna," said Bratti, looking round at her very
deliberately, his mind not being subject to surprise. "It's a necklace
worth money, but I shall get little by it, for my heart's too tender for
a trader's; I have promised to keep it in pledge."

"Pray tell me where