“What will make me wretched?” he said, with a scarcely perceptible movement across his face, as from some darting sensation.
“This fear—this heavy armour. I can’t help shuddering as I feel it under my arm. I could fancy it a story of enchantment—that some malignant fiend had changed your sensitive human skin into a hard shell. It seems so unlike my bright, lighthearted Tito!”
“Then you would rather have your husband exposed to danger, when he leaves you?” said Tito, smiling. “If you don’t mind my being poniarded or shot, why need I mind? I will give up the armour—shall I?”
“No, Tito, no. I am fanciful. Do not heed what I have said. But such crimes are surely not common in Florence? I have always heard my father and godfather say so. Have they become frequent lately?”
“It is not unlikely they will become frequent, with the bitter hatreds that are being bred continually.”
Romola was silent a few moments. She shrank from insisting further on the subject of the armour. She tried to shake it off.
“Tell me what has happened today,” she said, in a cheerful tone. “Has all gone off well?”
“Excellently well. First of all, the rain came and put an end to Luca Corsini’s oration, which nobody wanted to hear, and a ready-tongued personage—some say it was Gaddi, some say it was Melema, but really it was done so quickly no one knows who it was—had the honour of giving the Cristianissimo the briefest possible welcome in bad French.”
“Tito, it was you, I know,” said Romola, smiling brightly, and kissing him. “How is it you never care about claiming anything? And after that?”