Marco. She was painfully
divided between the dread of seeing any evidence to arouse her
suspicions, and the impulse to watch lest any harm should come that she
might have arrested.

As they walked together this evening, Tito said--"The business of the
day is not yet quite ended for me. I shall conduct you to our door, my
Romola, and then I must fulfil another commission, which will take me an
hour, perhaps, before I can return and rest, as I very much need to do."

And then he talked amusingly of what he had seen at Pisa, until they
were close upon a loggia, near which there hung a lamp before a picture
of the Virgin. The street was a quiet one, and hitherto they had passed
few people; but now there was a sound of many approaching footsteps and
confused voices.

"We shall not get home without a wetting, unless we take shelter under
this convenient loggia," Tito said, hastily, hurrying Romola, with a
slightly startled movement, up the step of the loggia.

"Surely it is useless to wait for this small drizzling rain," said
Romola, in surprise.

"No: I felt it becoming heavier. Let us wait a little." With that
wakefulness to the faintest indication which belongs to a mind
habitually in a state of caution, Tito had detected by the glimmer of
the lamp that the leader of the advancing group wore a red feather and a
glittering sword-hilt--in fact, was almost the last person in the world
he would have chosen to meet at this hour with Romola by his side. He
had already during the day had one momentous interview with Dolfo Spini,
and the business he had spoken of to Romola as yet to be done was a
second interview with that personage, a sequence of the visit he had
paid at San Marco. Tito, by a long-preconcerted plan, had been the
bearer of letters to Savonarola--carefully-forged letters; one of them,
by a stratagem, bearing the very signature and seal of the Cardinal of
Naples, who of all the Sacred College had most exerted his influence at
Rome in favour of the Frate. The purport of the letters was to state
that the Cardinal was on his progress from Pisa, and, unwilling for
strong reasons to enter Florence, yet desirous of taking counsel with
Savonarola at this difficult juncture, intended to pause this very day
at San Casciano, about ten miles from the city, whence he would ride out
the next morning in the plain garb of a priest, and meet Savonarola, as
if casually, five miles on the Florence road, two hours after s