udent
falsities of citation to serve the ends of their vanity and secure a
triumph to their own mistakes. Wherefore, my Tito, I think it not well
that we should let slip the occasion that lies under our hands. And now
we will turn back to the point where we have cited the passage from
Thucydides, and I wish you, by way of preliminary, to go with me through
all my notes on the Latin translation made by Lorenzo Valla, for which
the incomparable Pope Nicholas the Fifth--with whose personal notice I
was honoured while I was yet young, and when he was still Thomas of
Sarzana--paid him (I say not unduly) the sum of five hundred gold scudi.
But inasmuch as Valla, though otherwise of dubious fame, is held in
high honour for his severe scholarship, whence the epigrammatist has
jocosely said of him that since he went among the shades, Pluto himself
has not dared to speak in the ancient languages, it is the more needful
that his name should not be as a stamp warranting false wares; and
therefore I would introduce an _excursus_ on Thucydides, wherein my
castigations of Valla's text may find a fitting place. My Romola, thou
wilt reach the needful volumes--thou knowest them--on the fifth shelf of
the cabinet."

Tito rose at the same moment with Romola, saying, "I will reach them, if
you will point them out," and followed her hastily into the adjoining
small room, where the walls were also covered with ranges of books in
perfect order.

"There they are," said Romola, pointing upward; "every book is just
where it was when my father ceased to see them."

Tito stood by her without hastening to reach the books. They had never
been in this room together before.

"I hope," she continued, turning her eyes full on Tito, with a look of
grave confidence--"I hope he will not weary you; this work makes him so
happy."

"And me too, Romola--if you will only let me say, I love you--if you
will only think me worth loving a little."

His speech was the softest murmur, and the dark beautiful face, nearer
to hers than it had ever been before, was looking at her with beseeching
tenderness.

"I do love you," murmured Romola; she looked at him with the same simple
majesty as ever, but her voice had never in her life before sunk to that
murmur. It seemed to them both that they were looking at each other a
long while before her lips moved again; yet it was but a moment till she
said, "I know _now_ what it is to be happy."

The faces just met,