here came slowly into view, at a height far above the
heads of the onlookers, a huge and ghastly image of Winged Time with his
scythe and hour-glass, surrounded by his winged children, the Hours. He
was mounted on a high car completely covered with black, and the
bullocks that drew the car were also covered with black, their horns
alone standing out white above the gloom; so that in the sombre shadow
of the houses it seemed to those at a distance as if Time and his
children were apparitions floating through the air. And behind them
came what looked like a troop of the sheeted dead gliding above
blackness. And as they glided slowly, they chanted in a wailing strain.

A cold horror seized on Romola, for at the first moment it seemed as if
her brother's vision, which could never be effaced from her mind, was
being half fulfilled. She clung to Tito, who, divining what was in her
thoughts, said--

"What dismal fooling sometimes pleases your Florentines! Doubtless this
is an invention of Piero di Cosimo, who loves such grim merriment."

"Tito, I wish it had not happened. It will deepen the images of that
vision which I would fain be rid of."

"Nay, Romola, you will look only at the images of our happiness now. I
have locked all sadness away from you."

"But it is still there--it is only hidden," said Romola, in a low tone,
hardly conscious that she spoke.

"See, they are all gone now!" said Tito. "You will forget this ghastly
mummery when we are in the light, and can see each other's eyes. My
Ariadne must never look backward now--only forward to Easter, when she
will triumph with her Care-dispeller."

PART TWO.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

FLORENCE EXPECTS A GUEST.

It was the 17th of November 1494: more than eighteen months since Tito
and Romola had been finally united in the joyous Easter time, and had
had a rainbow-tinted shower of comfits thrown over them, after the
ancient Greek fashion, in token that the heavens would shower sweets on
them through all their double life.

Since that Easter a great change had come over the prospects of
Florence; and as in the tree that bears a myriad of blossoms, each
single bud with its fruit is dependent on the primary circulation of the
sap, so the fortunes of Tito and Romola were dependent on certain grand
political and social conditions which made an epoch in the history of
Italy.

In this very November, little more than a week ago, the spirit of the
old cen