f not only that Tito had changed,
but that he had changed towards her. Did the reason lie in herself?
She might perhaps have thought so, if there had not been the facts of
the armour and the picture to suggest some external event which was an
entire mystery to her.

But Tito no sooner believed that Romola was out of the house than he
laid down his pen and looked up, in delightful security from seeing
anything else than parchment and broken marble. He was rather disgusted
with himself that he had not been able to look up at Romola and behave
to her just as usual. He would have chosen, if he could, to be even
more than usually kind; but he could not, on a sudden, master an
involuntary shrinking from her, which, by a subtle relation, depended on
those very characteristics in him that made him desire not to fail in
his marks of affection. He was about to take a step which he knew would
arouse her deep indignation; he would have to encounter much that was
unpleasant before he could win her forgiveness. And Tito could never
find it easy to face displeasure and anger; his nature was one of those
most remote from defiance or impudence, and all his inclinations leaned
towards preserving Romola's tenderness. He was not tormented by
sentimental scruples which, as he had demonstrated to himself by a very
rapid course of argument, had no relation to solid utility; but his
freedom from scruples did not release him from the dread of what was
disagreeable. Unscrupulousness gets rid of much, but not of toothache,
or wounded vanity, or the sense of loneliness, against which, as the
world at present stands, there is no security but a thoroughly healthy
jaw, and a just, loving soul. And Tito was feeling intensely at this
moment that no devices could save him from pain in the impending
collision with Romola; no persuasive blandness could cushion him against
the shock towards which he was being driven like a timid animal urged to
a desperate leap by the terror of the tooth and the claw that are close
behind it.

The secret feeling he had previously had that the tenacious adherence to
Bardo's wishes about the library had become under existing difficulties
a piece of sentimental folly, which deprived himself and Romola of
substantial advantages, might perhaps never have wrought itself into
action but for the events of the past week, which had brought at once
the pressure of a new motive and the outlet of a rare opportunity. Nay,
it