, to take measures for preventing Fra Girolamo from
passing the gates? But that might be too late. Romola thought, with
new distress, that she had failed to learn any guiding details from
Tito, and it was already long past seven. She must go to San Marco:
there was nothing else to be done.

She hurried down the stairs, she went out into the street without
looking at her sick people, and walked at a swift pace along the Via de'
Bardi towards the Ponte Vecchio. She would go through the heart of the
city; it was the most direct road, and, besides, in the great Piazza
there was a chance of encountering her husband, who, by some possibility
to which she still clung, might satisfy her of the Frate's safety, and
leave no need for her to go to San Marco. When she arrived in front of
the Palazzo Vecchio, she looked eagerly into the pillared court; then
her eyes swept the Piazza; but the well-known figure, once painted in
her heart by young love, and now branded there by eating pain, was
nowhere to be seen. She hurried straight on to the Piazza del Duomo.
It was already full of movement: there were worshippers passing up and
down the marble steps, there were men pausing for chat, and there were
market-people carrying their burdens. Between those moving figures
Romola caught a glimpse of her husband. On his way from San Marco he
had turned into Nello's shop, and was now leaning against the door-post.
As Romola approached she could see that he was standing and talking,
with the easiest air in the world, holding his cap in his hand, and
shaking back his freshly-combed hair. The contrast of this ease with
the bitter anxieties he had created convulsed her with indignation: the
new vision of his hardness heightened her dread. She recognised Cronaca
and two other frequenters of San Marco standing near her husband. It
flashed through her mind--"I will compel him to speak before those men."
And her light step brought her close upon him before he had time to
move, while Cronaca was saying, "Here comes Madonna Romola."

A slight shock passed through Tito's frame as he felt himself face to
face with his wife. She was haggard with her anxious watching, but
there was a flash of something else than anxiety in her eyes as she
said--

"Is the Frate gone beyond the gates?"

"No," said Tito, feeling completely helpless before this woman, and
needing all the self-command he possessed to preserve a countenance in
which there should se