“That I decline to tell,” said Tito. “It is enough that the Frate’s safety will be secured.”
“It is a plot for drawing him outside the gates that Spini may murder him.”
“There has been no intention of murder. It is simply a plot for compelling him to obey the Pope’s summons to Rome. But as I serve the popular government, and think the Frate’s presence here is a necessary means of maintaining it at present, I choose to prevent his departure. You may go to sleep with entire ease of mind tonight.”
For a moment Romola was silent. Then she said, in a voice of anguish, “Tito, it is of no use: I have no belief in you.”
She could just discern his action as he shrugged his shoulders, and spread out his palms in silence. That cold dislike which is the anger of unimpassioned beings was hardening within him.
“If the Frate leaves the city—if any harm happens to him,” said Romola, after a slight pause, in a new tone of indignant resolution—“I will declare what I have heard to the Signoria, and you will be disgraced. What if I am your wife?” she went on, impetuously; “I will be disgraced with you. If we are united, I am that part of you that will save you from crime. Others shall not be betrayed.”
“I am quite aware of what you would be likely to do, anima mia ,” said Tito, in the coolest of his liquid tones; “therefore if you have a small amount of reasoning at your disposal just now, consider that if you believe me in nothing else, you may believe me when I say I will take care of myself, and not put it in your power to ruin me.”
“Then you assure me that the Frate is warned—he will not go beyond the gates?”
“He shall not go beyond the gates.”