st before been
hemming in further speech, and he now addressed Tito again with his
ordinary calmness.

"Ah! young man, you are happy in having been able to unite the
advantages of travel with those of study, and you will be welcome among
us as a bringer of fresh tidings from a land which has become sadly
strange to us, except through the agents of a now restricted commerce
and the reports of hasty pilgrims. For those days are in the far
distance which I myself witnessed, when men like Aurispa and Guarino
went out to Greece as to a storehouse, and came back laden with
manuscripts which every scholar was eager to borrow--and, be it owned
with shame, not always willing to restore; nay, even the days when
erudite Greeks flocked to our shores for a refuge, seem far-off now--
farther off than the on-coming of my blindness. But doubtless, young
man, research after the treasures of antiquity was not alien to the
purpose of your travels?"

"Assuredly not," said Tito. "On the contrary, my companion--my father--
was willing to risk his life in his zeal for the discovery of
inscriptions and other traces of ancient civilisation."

"And I trust there is a record of his researches and their results,"
said Bardo, eagerly, "since they must be even more precious than those
of Ciriaco, which I have diligently availed myself of, though they are
not always illuminated by adequate learning."

"There _was_ such a record," said Tito, "but it was lost, like
everything else, in the shipwreck I suffered below Ancona. The only
record left is such as remains in our--in my memory."

"You must lose no time in committing it to paper, young man," said
Bardo, with growing interest. "Doubtless you remember much, if you
aided in transcription; for when I was your age, words wrought
themselves into my mind as if they had been fixed by the tool of the
graver; wherefore I constantly marvel at the capriciousness of my
daughter's memory, which grasps certain objects with tenacity, and lets
fall all those minutiae whereon depends accuracy, the very soul of
scholarship. But I apprehend no such danger with you, young man, if
your will has seconded the advantages of your training."

When Bardo made this reference to his daughter, Tito ventured to turn
his eyes towards her, and at the accusation against her memory his face
broke into its brightest smile, which was reflected as inevitably as
sudden sunbeams in Romola's. Conceive the soothing delight of