This, in brief, had been the history of Tito's relation to Tessa up to a
very recent date. It is true that once or twice before Bardo's death,
the sense that there was Tessa up the hill, with whom it was possible to
pass an hour agreeably, had been an inducement to him to escape from a
little weariness of the old man, when, for lack of any positive
engagement, he might otherwise have borne the weariness patiently and
shared Romola's burden. But the moment when he had first felt a real
hunger for Tessa's ignorant lovingness and belief in _him_ had not come
till quite lately, and it was distinctly marked out by circumstances as
little to be forgotten as the oncoming of a malady that has permanently
vitiated the sight and hearing. It was the day when he had first seen
Baldassarre, and had bought the armour. Returning across the bridge
that night, with the coat of mail in his hands, he had felt an
unconquerable shrinking from an immediate encounter with Romola. She,
too, knew little of the actual world; she, too, trusted him; but he had
an uneasy consciousness that behind her frank eyes there was a nature
that could judge him, and that any ill-founded trust of hers sprang not
from pretty brute-like incapacity, but from a nobleness which might
prove an alarming touchstone. He wanted a little ease, a little repose
from self-control, after the agitation and exertions of the day; he
wanted to be where he could adjust his mind to the morrow, without
caring how he behaved at the present moment. And there was a sweet
adoring creature within reach whose presence was as safe and
unconstraining as that of her own kids,--who would believe any fable,
and remain quite unimpressed by public opinion. And so on that evening,
when Romola was waiting and listening for him, he turned his steps up
the hill.

No wonder, then, that the steps took the same course on this evening,
eleven days later, when he had had to recoil under Romola's first
outburst of scorn. He could not wish Tessa in his wife's place, or
refrain from wishing that his wife should be thoroughly reconciled to
him; for it was Romola, and not Tessa, that belonged to the world where
all the larger desires of a man who had ambition and effective faculties
must necessarily lie. But he wanted a refuge from a standard
disagreeably rigorous, of which he could not make himself independent
simply by thinking it folly; and Tessa's little soul was that inviting
refuge.

It