Piero looked round, and gave a silent shrug. He was vexed at his own forgetfulness.
She was still looking at the sketch in astonishment; but presently she turned towards the painter, and said with puzzled alarm—
“What a strange picture! When did you paint it? What does it mean?”
“A mere fancy of mine,” said Piero, lifting off his skull-cap, scratching his head, and making the usual grimace by which he avoided the betrayal of any feeling. “I wanted a handsome young face for it, and your husband’s was just the thing.”
He went forward, stooped down to the picture, and lifting it away with its back to Romola, pretended to be giving it a passing examination, before putting it aside as a thing not good enough to show.
But Romola, who had the fact of the armour in her mind, and was penetrated by this strange coincidence of things which associated Tito with the idea of fear, went to his elbow and said—
“Don’t put it away; let me look again. That man with the rope round his neck—I saw him—I saw you come to him in the Duomo. What was it that made you put him into a picture with Tito?”
Piero saw no better resource than to tell part of the truth.
“It was a mere accident. The man was running away—running up the steps, and caught hold of your husband: I suppose he had stumbled. I happened to be there, and saw it, and I thought the savage-looking old fellow was a good subject. But it’s worth nothing—it’s only a freakish daub of mine.” Piero ended contemptuously, moving the sketch away with an air of decision, and putting it on a high shelf. “Come and look at the Oedipus.”
He had shown a little too much anxiety in putting the sketch out of her sight, and had produced the very impression he had sought to prevent—that there was really something unpleasant, something disadvantageous to Tito, in the circumstances out of which the picture arose. But this impression silenced her: her pride and delicacy shrank from questioning further, where questions might seem to imply that she could entertain even a slight suspicion against her husband. She merely said, in as quiet a tone as she could—