sult, willing to cheer the old
man, and conscious that Romola repaid those gentle words to her father
with a sort of adoration that no direct tribute to herself could have
won from her.

This question of the library was the subject of more than one discussion
with Bernardo del Nero when Christmas was turned and the prospect of the
marriage was becoming near--but always out of Bardo's hearing. For
Bardo nursed a vague belief, which they dared not disturb, that his
property, apart from the library, was adequate to meet all demands. He
would not even, except under a momentary pressure of angry despondency,
admit to himself that the will by which he had disinherited Dino would
leave Romola the heir of nothing but debts; or that he needed anything
from patronage beyond the security that a separate locality should be
assigned to his library, in return for a deed of gift by which he made
it over to the Florentine Republic.

"My opinion is," said Bernardo to Romola, in a consultation they had
under the loggia, "that since you are to be married, and Messer Tito
will have a competent income, we should begin to wind up the affairs,
and ascertain exactly the sum that would be necessary to save the
library from being touched, instead of letting the debts accumulate any
longer. Your father needs nothing but his shred of mutton and his
macaroni every day, and I think Messer Tito may engage to supply that
for the years that remain; he can let it be in place of the
_morgen-cap_."

"Tito has always known that my life is bound up with my father's," said
Romola; "and he is better to my father than I am: he delights in making
him happy."

"Ah, he's not made of the same clay as other men, is he?" said Bernardo,
smiling. "Thy father has thought of shutting woman's folly out of thee
by cramming thee with Greek and Latin; but thou hast been as ready to
believe in the first pair of bright eyes and the first soft words that
have come within reach of thee, as if thou couldst say nothing by heart
but Paternosters, like other Christian men's daughters."

"Now, godfather," said Romola, shaking her head playfully, "as if it
were only bright eyes and soft words that made me love Tito! You know
better. You know I love my father and you because you are both good,
and I love Tito too because he is so good. I see it, I feel it, in
everything he says and does. And if he is handsome, too, why should I
not love him the better for that? It seems