ngs of the road on the level prevented her from seeing Maso was not very far ahead of her. But when she had d Pietra and was on rising ground, she lifted up the ng roof of her cowl and looked eagerly before her. he cowl was dropped again immediately. She had seen, aso, but-two monks, who were approaching within a ards of her. The edge of her cowl making a pent-house r brow had shut out the objects above the level of her and for the last few moments she had been looking at ag but the brightness on the path and at her own shadow, nd shrouded like a dread spectre. he wished now that she had not looked up. Her disguise her especially dislike to encounter monks: they might et some pious passwords of which she knew nothing, and walked along with a careful appearance of unconsciousill she had seen the skirts of the black mantles pass by The encounter had made her heart beat disagreeably, Comola had an uneasiness in her religious disguise, a e at this studied concealment, which was made more et by a special effort to appear unconscious under actual THE BLAC e it classic grow CHAPTER XVIII. The Black Marks become Magical. THAT journey of Tito's to Rome, which had removed many difficulties from Romola's departure, had been resolved on quite suddenly, at a supper, only the evening before. Tito had set out towards that supper with agreeable expectations. The meats were likely to be delicate, the wines choice, the company distinguished; for the place of entertainment was the Selva or Orto de' Rucellai, or, as we should say, the Rucellai Gardens; and the host, Bernardo Rucellai, was quite a typical Florentine grandee. Even his family name has a significance which is prettily symbolic: properly understood, it may bring before us a little lichen, popularly named orcella or roccella, which grows on the rocks of Greek isles and in the Canaries; and having drunk a great deal of light into its little stems and button-heads, will, under certain circumstances, give it out again as a reddish purple dye, very grateful to the eyes of men. By bringing the excellent secret of this dye, called oricello, from the Levant to Florence, a certain merchant, who lived nearly a hundred years before our Bernardo's time, won for himself and his descendants much wealth, and the pleasantly-suggestive surname of Oricellari, or Roccellari, which on Tuscan tongues speedily became Rucellai. Platonic Academ written an excell about ancient a pure Latinity. like a laudator Ausonian Muses hair, and Natu bine so many virt His invitation had mabuoni, with an ut the object of t e questions of t T. Tito felt sure tered by the ex eek wine; for Be tal personage, See weeks had he Tito in the best s ala, where the cla might have had so company he ely to be dull a perience of variou especially of t only been calle Terse (which wo exposition of th mplete ripeness peaking It was a dark e occasional ligh Virgin, that ugh for recogn th his passage re observed tha andle folded rou And our Bernardo, who stands out more prominently than the rest on this purple background, had added all sorts of distinction to the family name: he had married the sister of Lorenzo de' Medici, and had hab the most splendid wedding in the memory of Florentine upholstery; and for these and other virtues he had been sent on embassies to France and Venice, and had been chosen Gonfaloniere; he had not only built himself a fine palace, but had finished putting the black and white marble façade to the church of Santa Maria Novella; he had planted a garden with rare trees, and had e it classic ground by receiving within it the meetings of atonic Academy, orphaned by the death of Lorenzo; he ritten an excellent, learned book, of a new topographical about ancient Rome; he had collected antiquities; he pure Latinity. The simplest account of him, one sees, like a laudatory epitaph, at the end of which the Greek Ausonian Muses might be confidently requested to tear hair, and Nature to desist from any second attempt to ne so many virtues with one set of viscera. is invitation had been conveyed to Tito through Lorenzo abuoni, with an emphasis which would have suggested the object of the gathering was political, even if the c questions of the time had been less absorbing. As it Tito felt sure that some party purposes were to be ered by the excellent flavours of stewed fish and old k wine; for Bernardo Rucellai was not simply an intial personage, he was one of the elect Twenty who for weeks had held the reins of Florence. This assurance ito in the best spirits as he made his way to the Via della 1, where the classic garden was to be found: without it, ight have had some uneasy speculation as to whether the company he would have the honour of meeting was y to be dull as well as distinguished; for he had had rience of various dull suppers even in the Rucellai gardens, especially of the dull philosophic sort, wherein he had >nly been called upon to accept an entire scheme of the erse (which would have been easy to him), but to listen to xposition of the same, from the origin of things to their plete ripeness in the tractate of the philosopher then king. t was a dark evening, and it was only when Tito crossed occasional light of a lamp suspended before an image of Virgin, that the outline of his figure was discernible 1gh for recognition. At such moments any one caring to eh his passage from one of these lights to another might e observed that the tall and graceful personage with the tle folded round him was followed constantly by a very different form, thick-set and elderly, in a serge tunic and felt hat. The conjunction might have been taken for mere chance, since there were many passengers along the streets at this hour. But when Tito stopped at the gate of the Rucellai gardens, the figure behind stopped too. The sportello, or smaller door of the gate, was already being held open by the servant, who, in the distraction of attending to some question, had not yet closed it since the last arrival, and Tito turned in rapidly, giving his name to the servant, and passing on between the evergreen bushes that shone like metal in the torchlight. The follower turned in too. "Your name?" said the servant. "Baldassarre Calvo," was the immediate answer. "You are not a guest; the guests have all passed." "I belong to Tito Melema, who has just gone in. I am to wait in the gardens." The servant hesitated. "I had orders to admit only guests. Are you a servant of Messer Tito?" "No, friend, I am not a servant; I am a scholar." There are men to whom you need only say, "I am a buffalo," in a certain tone of quiet confidence, and they will let you pass. The porter gave way at once, Baldassarre entered, and heard the door closed and chained behind him, as he too disappeared among the shining bushes. Those ready and firm answers argued a great change in Baldassarre since the last meeting face to face with Tito, when the dagger broke in two. The change had declared itself in a startling way. THE BLACK ut bodily helpless of the past: he elled through the d At the moment when the shadow of Tito passed in front of the hovel as he departed homeward, Baldassarre was sitting in that state of after-tremor known to every one who is liable to great outbursts of passion: a state in which physical powerlessness is sometimes accompanied by an exceptional lucidity of thought, as if that disengagement of excited passion had carried away a fire-mist and left clearness behind it. He felt unable to rise and walk away just yet; his limbs seemed benumbed; he was cold, and his hands shook. But page add days he had to read further bodily helplessness he sat surrounded, not by the dimness and vanishing shadows, but by the clear of the past: he was living again in an unbroken course that life which seemed a long preparation for the bitterness. some minutes he was too thoroughly absorbed by the to reflect on the fact that he saw them, and note the a change. But when that sudden clearness had d through the distance, and came at last to rest on the st gone by, he felt fully where he was: he remembered Lisa and Tessa. Ah! he then was the mysterious d; he who had another wife in the Via de' Bardi. It e to pick up the broken dagger and go-go and leave ze of himself; for to hide his feebleness seemed the most like power that was left to him. He leaned to take fragments of the dagger; then he turned towards ok which lay open at his side. It was a fine large ript, an odd volume of Pausanias. The moonlight on it, and he could see the large letters at the head of re: days he had known Pausanias familiarly; yet an r two ago he had been looking hopelessly at that page, had suggested no more meaning to him than if the had been black weather-marks on a wall; but at this at they were once more the magic signs that conjure up d. That moonbeam falling on the letters had raised nia before him, and its struggle against the Spartan |