ugh to pay Bernardo del Nero, and reduce the difficulties about
the library. It was not possible that Tito could feel so strongly on
this last point as she did, and it was asking a great deal from him to
give up luxuries for which he really laboured. The next time Tito came
home she would be careful to suppress all those promptings that seemed
to isolate her from him. Romola was labouring, as a loving woman must,
to subdue her nature to her husband's. The great need of her heart
compelled her to strangle, with desperate resolution, every rising
impulse of suspicion, pride, and resentment; she felt equal to any
self-infliction that would save her from ceasing to love. That would
have been like the hideous nightmare in which the world had seemed to
break away all round her, and leave her feet overhanging the darkness.
Romola had never distinctly imagined such a future for herself; she was
only beginning to feel the presence of effort in that clinging trust
which had once been mere repose.

She waited and listened long, for Tito had not come straight home after
leaving Niccolo Caparra, and it was more than two hours after the time
when he was crossing the Ponte Rubaconte that Romola heard the great
door of the court turning on its hinges, and hastened to the head of the
stone steps. There was a lamp hanging over the stairs, and they could
see each other distinctly as he ascended. The eighteen months had
produced a more definable change in Romola's face than in Tito's; the
expression was more subdued, less cold, and more beseeching, and, as the
pink flush overspread her face now, in her joy that the long waiting was
at an end, she was much lovelier than on the day when Tito had first
seen her. On that day, any on-looker would have said that Romola's
nature was made to command, and Tito's to bend; yet now Romola's mouth
was quivering a little, and there was some timidity in her glance.

He made an effort to smile, as she said--

"My Tito, you are tired; it has been a fatiguing day: is it not true?"

Maso was there, and no more was said until they had crossed the
ante-chamber and closed the door of the library behind them. The wood
was burning brightly on the great dogs; that was one welcome for Tito,
late as he was, and Romola's gentle voice was another.

He just turned and kissed her when she took off his mantle; then he went
towards a high-backed chair placed for him near the fire, threw himself
into it, and f