.

"Then I shall fulfil my commission."

The friar put his hand under his scapulary, and drawing out a small
linen bag which hung round his neck, took from it a bit of parchment,
doubled and stuck firmly together with some black adhesive substance,
and placed it in Tito's hand. On the outside was written in Italian, in
a small but distinct character--

"_Tito Melema, aged twenty-three, with a dark, beautiful face, long dark
curls, the brightest smile, and a large onyx ring on his right
forefinger_."

Tito did not look at the friar, but tremblingly broke open the bit of
parchment. Inside, the words were--

"_I am sold for a slave: I think they are going to take me to Antioch.
The gems alone will serve to ransom me_."

Tito looked round at the friar, but could only ask a question with his
eyes.

"I had it at Corinth," the friar said, speaking with difficulty, like
one whose small strength had been overtaxed--"I had it from a man who
was dying."

"He is dead, then?" said Tito, with a bounding of the heart.

"Not the writer. The man who gave it me was a pilgrim, like myself, to
whom the writer had intrusted it, because he was journeying to Italy."

"You know the contents?"

"I do not know them, but I conjecture them. Your friend is in slavery:
you will go and release him. But I am unable to talk now." The friar,
whose voice had become feebler and feebler, sank down on the stone bench
against the wall from which he had risen to touch Tito's hand, adding--

"I am at San Marco; my name is Fra Luca."

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

TITO'S DILEMMA.

When Fra Luca had ceased to speak, Tito still stood by him in
irresolution, and it was not till, the pressure of the passengers being
removed, the friar rose and walked slowly into the church of Santa
Felicita, that Tito also went on his way along the Via de' Bardi.

"If this monk is a Florentine," he said to himself; "if he is going to
remain at Florence, everything must be disclosed." He felt that a new
crisis had come, but he was not, for all that, too evidently agitated to
pay his visit to Bardo, and apologise for his previous non-appearance.
Tito's talent for concealment was being fast developed into something
less neutral. It was still possible--perhaps it might be inevitable--
for him to accept frankly the altered conditions, and avow Baldassarre's
existence; but hardly without casting an unpleasant light backward on
his original reticence as studied equivoc