Some few shook their heads; could not quite believe it; and thought there was more behind.  But the majority of honest Trebians were affected somewhat in the same way as Mr. Wall, the brewer of the town, who observed to his wife as they walked home, “I feel somehow as if I believed more in everything that’s good.”

Felix and Esther did not take up their abode in Treby Magna; and after awhile Mr. Lyon left the town too, and joined them where they dwelt.

As to the town in which Felix Holt now resides I will keep that a secret.

I will only say that Esther has never repented.  Felix, however, grumbles a little that she has made his life too easy.

There is a young Felix, who has a great deal more science than his father, but not much more money.

* * * * *

Romola

“Romola” was George Eliot’s fifth book, and followed “Silas Marner,” which was published in 1861.  It is a story of Florence in the days of Savonarola, and was largely the outcome of a visit the novelist paid to Italy with her life-long friend, George Henry Lewes.  With dim ideas for the story in her mind, she made exhaustive researches in the Florentine libraries, gathering historical and topographical details of the city and its life as they were in the mediaeval period which she was setting herself to re-create.  After much study there and at home, and after one false start, she made a serious beginning in January, 1862.  She was engaged upon it for eighteen months, always in doubt and sometimes in despair of her ability to accomplish the task, and by June of the following year she had thankfully written the last words of what is regarded by some as her greatest book.  Meanwhile, the romance had begun to appear serially in the “Cornhill” in July, 1862.  The writing of “Romola” is said to have “ploughed into her” more than any of her other books.

I.—­Tito and Little Tessa

Under the Loggia de Cerchi, in the heart of old Florence, in the early morning of April 9, 1492, two men had their eyes fixed on each other.  One was looking downward with the scrutiny of curiosity; the other, lying on the pavement, was looking upward with the startled gaze of a suddenly awakened dreamer.

“Young man,” said the standing figure, pointing to a ring on the finger of the other, “when your chin has got a stiffer crop on it you’ll know better than to take your nap in street corners with a ring like that on your forefinger.  By the holy ’vangels, if it had been anybody but me standing over you—­but Bratti Ferravecchi is not the man to steal!  Three years ago, one San Giovanni, the saint, sent a dead body in my way—­a blind beggar, with his cap well lined with pieces.  But how comes a young man like you, with the face of Messer San Michele, to be sleeping on a stone bed?  Your tunic and hose match ill with that jewel, young man.  Anybody might say the saints had sent you a dead body; but if you took the jewels, I hope you buried him—­and you can afford a mass or two for him into the bargain!”