ABSTRACT
The 'good-natured Nello' seeks to explain Tito's blush as the result of his own fault. According to Nello, Tito's behaviour is a reaction to an aspect of his own self, 'his want of reticence'. Throughout the novel a series of fleeting reactions, taken together, act to ground George Eliot's description of human nature as something not immediately visible in its entirety but, nevertheless, when submitted to the action of disinterested and prolonged scrutiny, wholly present in the human scene, across all of time. Throughout Romola Eliot plays a double game in order to render Tito's dissembling an observable facet of human nature. Romola can see through the schemer only once she has gained the experience of a continued observation of Tito's body and has studied the mortification of the self. In Romola, Tito's glance gives rise to an equally filial misinterpretation.
