If it had been in Tito’s nature to feel an access of rage, he would have felt it against this bull-faced accomplice, unfit either for a leader or a tool. His lips turned white, but his excitement came from the pressing difficulty of choosing a safe device. If he attempted to hush Spini, that would only deepen Romola’s suspicion, and he knew her well enough to know that if some strong alarm were roused in her, she was neither to be silenced nor hoodwinked: on the other hand, if he repelled Spini angrily the wine-breathing Compagnaccio might become savage, being more ready at resentment than at the divination of motives. He adopted a third course, which proved that Romola retained one sort of power over him—the power of dread.
He pressed her hand, as if intending a hint to her, and said in a good-humoured tone of comradeship—
“Yes, my Dolfo, you may prepare in all security. But take no trumpets with you.”
“Don’t be afraid,” said Spini, a little piqued. “No need to play Ser Saccente with me. I know where the devil keeps his tail as well as you do. What! he swallowed the bait whole? The prophetic nose didn’t scent the hook at all?” he went on, lowering his tone a little, with a blundering sense of secrecy.
“The brute will not be satisfied till he has emptied the bag,” thought Tito: but aloud he said,—“Swallowed all as easily as you swallow a cup of Trebbiano. Ha! I see torches: there must be a dead body coming. The pestilence has been spreading, I hear.”
“Santiddio! I hate the sight of those biers. Good-night,” said Spini, hastily moving off.
The torches were really coming, but they preceded a church dignitary who was returning homeward; the suggestion of the dead body and the pestilence was Tito’s device for getting rid of Spini without telling him to go. The moment he had moved away, Tito turned to Romola, and said, quietly—
“Do not be alarmed by anything that bestia has said, my Romola. We will go on now: I think the rain has not increased.”
She was quivering with indignant resolution; it was of no use for Tito to speak in that unconcerned way. She distrusted every word he could utter.
“I will not go on,” she said. “I will not move nearer home until I have some security against this treachery being perpetrated.”