Tessa looked up and saw a lady in black, with a young heavenly face and loving hazel eyes. She had never seen anyone like this lady before, and under other circumstances might have had awestruck thoughts about her; but now everything else was overcome by the sense that loving protection was near her. The tears only fell the faster, relieving her swelling heart, as she looked up at the heavenly face, and, putting her hand to her necklace, said sobbingly—
“I can’t give them to be burnt. My husband—he bought them for me—and they are so pretty—and Ninna—oh, I wish I’d never come!”
“Do not ask her for them,” said Romola, speaking to the white-robed boys in a tone of mild authority. “It answers no good end for people to give up such things against their will. That is not what Fra Girolamo approves: he would have such things given up freely.”
Madonna Romola’s word was not to be resisted, and the white train moved on. They even moved with haste, as if some new object had caught their eyes; and Tessa felt with bliss that they were gone, and that her necklace and clasp were still with her.
“Oh, I will go back to the house,” she said, still agitated; “I will go nowhere else. But if I should meet them again, and you not be there?” she added, expecting everything from this heavenly lady.
“Stay a little,” said Romola. “Come with me under this doorway, and we will hide the necklace and clasp, and then you will be in no danger.”
She led Tessa under the archway, and said, “Now, can we find room for your necklace and belt in your basket? Ah! your basket is full of crisp things that will break: let us be careful, and lay the heavy necklace under them.”
It was like a change in a dream to Tessa—the escape from nightmare into floating safety and joy—to find herself taken care of by this lady, so lovely, and powerful, and gentle. She let Romola unfasten her necklace and clasp, while she herself did nothing but look up at the face that bent over her.
“They are sweets for Lillo and Ninna,” she said, as Romola carefully lifted up the light parcels in the basket, and placed the ornaments below them.
“Those are your children?” said Romola, smiling. “And you would rather go home to them than see any more of the Carnival? Else you have not far to go to the Piazza de’ Signori, and there you would see the pile for the great bonfire.”
“No, oh no!” said Tessa, eagerly; “I shall never like bonfires again. I will go back.”
“You live at some castello, doubtless,” said Romola, not waiting for an answer. “Towards which gate do you go?”
“Towards Por’ Santa Croce.”
“Come, then,” said Romola, 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 someone 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 forevermore.
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 power for him now but in patience.
