d stumbled. I
happened to be there, and saw it, and I thought the savage-looking old
fellow was a good subject. But it's worth nothing--it's only a freakish
daub, of mine." Piero ended contemptuously, moving the sketch away with
an air of decision, and putting it on a high shelf. "Come and look at
the Oedipus."

He had shown a little too much anxiety in putting the sketch out of her
sight, and had produced the very impression he had sought to prevent--
that there was really something unpleasant, something disadvantageous to
Tito, in the circumstances out of which the picture arose. But this
impression silenced her: her pride and delicacy shrank from questioning
further, where questions might seem to imply that she could entertain
even a slight suspicion against her husband. She merely said, in as
quiet a tone as she could--

"He was a strange piteous-looking man, that prisoner. Do you know
anything more of him?"

"No more: I showed him the way to the hospital, that's all. See, now,
the face of Oedipus is pretty nearly finished; tell me what you think of
it."

Romola now gave her whole attention to her father's portrait, standing
in long silence before it.

"Ah," she said at last, "you have done what I wanted. You have given it
more of the listening look. My good Piero,"--she turned towards him
with bright moist eyes--"I am very grateful to you."

"Now that's what I can't bear in you women," said Piero, turning
impatiently, and kicking aside the objects that littered the floor--"you
are always pouring out feelings where there's no call for them. Why
should you be grateful to me for a picture you pay me for, especially
when I make you wait for it? And if I paint a picture, I suppose it's
for my own pleasure and credit to paint it well, eh? Are you to thank a
man for not being a rogue or a noodle? It's enough if he himself thanks
Messer Domeneddio, who has made him neither the one nor the other. But
women think walls are held together with honey."

"You crusty Piero! I forgot how snappish you are. Here, put this nice
sweetmeat in your mouth," said Romola, smiling through her tears, and
taking something very crisp and sweet from the little basket.

Piero accepted it very much as that proverbial bear that dreams of pears
might accept an exceedingly mellow "swan-egg"--really liking the gift,
but accustomed to have his pleasures and pains concealed under a shaggy
coat.

"It's good, Madonna Antigone