erness towards the old painter's anger, because she knew that her
father would have felt something like it. For herself, she was
conscious of no inward collision with the strict and sombre view of
pleasure which tended to repress poetry in the attempt to repress vice.
Sorrow and joy have each their peculiar narrowness; and a religious
enthusiasm like Savonarola's which ultimately blesses mankind by giving
the soul a strong propulsion towards sympathy with pain, indignation
against wrong, and the subjugation of sensual desire, must always incur
the reproach of a great negation. Romola's life had given her an
affinity for sadness which inevitably made her unjust towards merriment.
That subtle result of culture which we call Taste was subdued by the
need for deeper motive; just as the nicer demands of the palate are
annihilated by urgent hunger. Moving habitually amongst scenes of
suffering, and carrying woman's heaviest disappointment in her heart,
the severity which allied itself with self-renouncing beneficent
strength had no dissonance for her.

CHAPTER FIFTY.

TESSA ABROAD AND AT HOME.

Another figure easily recognised by us--a figure not clad in black, but
in the old red, green, and white--was approaching the Piazza that
morning to see the Carnival. She came from an opposite point, for Tessa
no longer lived on the hill of San Giorgio. After what had happened
there with Baldassarre, Tito had thought it best for that and other
reasons to find her a new home, but still in a quiet airy quarter, in a
house bordering on the wide garden grounds north of the Porta Santa
Croce.

Tessa was not come out sight-seeing without special leave. Tito had
been with her the evening before, and she had kept back the entreaty
which she felt to be swelling her heart and throat until she saw him in
a state of radiant ease, with one arm round the sturdy Lillo, and the
other resting gently on her own shoulder as she tried to make the tiny
Ninna steady on her legs. She was sure then that the weariness with
which he had come in and flung himself into his chair had quite melted
away from his brow and lips. Tessa had not been slow at learning a few
small stratagems by which she might avoid vexing Naldo and yet have a
little of her own way. She could read nothing else, but she had learned
to read a good deal in her husband's face.

And certainly the charm of that bright, gentle-humoured Tito who woke up
under the Loggia de' Cerc