taking her by the hand and leading her to the
corner of a street nearly opposite. "If you go down there," she said,
pausing, "you will soon be in a straight road. And I must leave you
now, because some one else expects me. You will not be frightened.
Your pretty things are quite safe now. Addio."

"Addio, Madonna," said Tessa, almost in a whisper, not knowing what else
it would be right to say; and in an instant the heavenly lady was gone.
Tessa turned to catch a last glimpse, but she only saw the tall gliding
figure vanish round the projecting stonework. So she went on her way in
wonder, longing to be once more safely housed with Monna Lisa,
undesirous of carnivals for evermore.

Baldassarre had kept Tessa in sight till the moment of her parting with
Romola: then he went away with his bundle of yarn. It seemed to him
that he had discerned a clue which might guide him if he could only
grasp the necessary details firmly enough. He had seen the two wives
together, and the sight had brought to his conceptions that vividness
which had been wanting before. His power of imagining facts needed to
be reinforced continually by the senses. The tall wife was the noble
and rightful wife; she had the blood in her that would be readily
kindled to resentment; she would know what scholarship was, and how it
might lie locked in by the obstructions of the stricken body, like a
treasure buried by earthquake. She could believe him: she would be
_inclined_ to believe him, if he proved to her that her husband was
unfaithful. Women cared about that: they would take vengeance for that.
If this wife of Tito's loved him, she would have a sense of injury
which Baldassarre's mind dwelt on with keen longing, as if it would be
the strength of another Will added to his own, the strength of another
mind to form devices.

Both these wives had been kind to Baldassarre, and their acts towards
him, being bound up with the very image of them, had not vanished from
his memory; yet the thought of their pain could not present itself to
him as a check. To him it seemed that pain was the order of the world
for all except the hard and base. If any were innocent, if any were
noble, where could the utmost gladness lie for them? Where it lay for
him--in unconquerable hatred and triumphant vengeance. But he must be
cautious: he must watch this wife in the Via de' Bardi, and learn more
of her; for even here frustration was possible. There was no po