“I’m glad she asked no more questions about that sketch,” he thought, when he had closed the door behind her. “I should be sorry for her to guess that I thought her fine husband a good model for a coward. But I made light of it; she’ll not think of it again.”
Piero was too sanguine, as open-hearted men are apt to be when they attempt a little clever simulation. The thought of the picture pressed more and more on Romola as she walked homeward. She could not help putting together the two facts of the chain-armour and the encounter mentioned by Piero between her husband and the prisoner, which had happened on the morning of the day when the armour was adopted. That look of terror which the painter had given Tito, had he seen it? What could it all mean?
“It means nothing,” she tried to assure herself. “It was a mere coincidence. Shall I ask Tito about it?” Her mind said at last, “No: I will not question him about anything he did not tell me spontaneously. It is an offence against the trust I owe him.” Her heart said, “I dare not ask him.”
There was a terrible flaw in the trust: she was afraid of any hasty movement, as men are who hold something precious and want to believe that it is not broken.
CHAPTER XXIX.
A Moment of Triumph.
“The old fellow has vanished; went on towards Arezzo the next morning; not liking the smell of the French, I suppose, after being their prisoner. I went to the hospital to inquire after him; I wanted to know if those broth-making monks had found out whether he was in his right mind or not. However, they said he showed no signs of madness—only took no notice of questions, and seemed to be planting a vine twenty miles off. He was a mysterious old tiger. I should have liked to know something more about him.”
It was in Nello’s shop that Piero di Cosimo was speaking, on the twenty-fourth of November, just a week after the entrance of the French. There was a party of six or seven assembled at the rather unusual hour of three in the afternoon; for it was a day on which all Florence was excited by the prospect of some decisive political event. Every lounging-place was full, and every shopkeeper who had no wife or deputy to leave in charge, stood at his door with his thumbs in his belt; while the streets were constantly sprinkled with artisans pausing or passing lazily like floating splinters, ready to rush forward impetuously if any object attracted them.
Nello had been thrumming the lute as he half sat on the board against the shop-window, and kept an outlook towards the piazza.
“Ah,” he said, laying down the lute, with emphasis, “I would not for a gold florin have missed that sight of the French soldiers waddling in their broad shoes after their runaway prisoners! That comes of leaving my shop to shave magnificent chins. It is always so: if ever I quit this navel of the earth something takes the opportunity of happening in my piazza.”