l.

Tito had a clearer vision of that result than of the possible moment
when he might find his father again, and carry him deliverance. It
would surely be an unfairness that he, in his full ripe youth, to whom
life had hitherto had some of the stint and subjection of a school,
should turn his back on promised love and distinction, and perhaps never
be visited by that promise again. "And yet," he said to himself, "if I
were certain that Baldassarre Calvo was alive, and that I could free
him, by whatever exertions or perils, I would go now--now I have the
money: it was useless to debate the matter before. I would go now to
Bardo and Bartolommeo Scala, and tell them the whole truth." Tito did
not say to himself so distinctly that if those two men had known the
whole truth he was aware there would have been no alternative for him
but to go in search of his benefactor, who, if alive, was the rightful
owner of the gems, and whom he had always equivocally spoken of as
"lost;" he did not say to himself--what he was not ignorant of--that
Greeks of distinction had made sacrifices, taken voyages again and
again, and sought help from crowned and mitred heads for the sake of
freeing relatives from slavery to the Turks. Public opinion did not
regard this as exceptional virtue.

This was his first real colloquy with himself: he had gone on following
the impulses of the moment, and one of those impulses had been to
conceal half the fact; he had never considered this part of his conduct
long enough to face the consciousness of his motives for the
concealment. What was the use of telling the whole? It was true, the
thought had crossed his mind several times since he had quitted Nauplia
that, after all, it was a great relief to be quit of Baldassarre, and he
would have liked to know _who_ it was that had fallen overboard. But
such thoughts spring inevitably out of a relation that is irksome.
Baldassarre was exacting, and had got stranger as he got older: he was
constantly scrutinising Tito's mind to see whether it answered to his
own exaggerated expectations; and age--the age of a thickset,
heavy-browed, bald man beyond sixty, whose intensity and eagerness in
the grasp of ideas have long taken the character of monotony and
repetition, may be looked at from many points of view without being
found attractive. Such a man, stranded among new acquaintances, unless
he had the philosopher's stone, would hardly find rank, youth, and
b