were a saint, and that made me tremble a little,
though the saints are very good, I know; and you were good to me, and
now you have taken care of Lillo. Perhaps you will always come and take
care of me. That was how Naldo did a long while ago; he came and took
care of me when I was frightened, one San Giovanni. I couldn't think
where he came from--he was so beautiful and good. And so are you,"
ended Tessa, looking up at Romola with devout admiration.

"Naldo is your husband. His eyes are like Lillo's," said Romola,
looking at the boy's darkly-pencilled eyebrows, unusual at his age. She
did not speak interrogatively, but with a quiet certainty of inference
which was necessarily mysterious to Tessa.

"Ah! you know him!" she said, pausing a little in wonder. "Perhaps you
know Nofri and Peretola, and our house on the hill, and everything.
Yes, like Lillo's; but not his hair. His hair is dark and long--" she
went on, getting rather excited. "Ah! if you know it, ecco!"

She had put her hand to a thin red silk cord that hung round her neck,
and drew from her bosom the tiny old parchment _Breve_, the horn of red
coral, and a long dark curl carefully tied at one end and suspended with
those mystic treasures. She held them towards Romola, away from Ninna's
snatching hand.

"It is a fresh one. I cut it lately. See how bright it is!" she said,
laying it against the white background of Romola's fingers. "They get
dim, and then he lets me cut another when his hair is grown; and I put
it with the Breve, because sometimes he is away a long while, and then I
think it helps to take care of me."

A slight shiver passed through Romola as the curl was laid across her
fingers. At Tessa's first mention of her husband as having come
mysteriously she knew not whence, a possibility had risen before Romola
that made her heart beat faster; for to one who is anxiously in search
of a certain object the faintest suggestions have a peculiar
significance. And when the curl was held towards her, it seemed for an
instant like a mocking phantasm of the lock she herself had cut to wind
with one of her own five years ago. But she preserved her outward
calmness, bent not only on knowing the truth, but also on coming to that
knowledge in a way that would not pain this poor, trusting, ignorant
thing, with the child's mind in the woman's body. "Foolish and
helpless:" yes; so far she corresponded to Baldassarre's account.

"It is a beautif