d by one thought to put any
question that was less direct. Perhaps before the next, morning she
might go to her godfather and say that she was not Tito Melema's lawful
wife--that the vows which had bound her to strive after an impossible
union had been made void beforehand.

Tessa gave a slight start at Romola's new tone of inquiry, and looked up
at her with a hesitating expression. Hitherto she had prattled on
without consciousness that she was making revelations, any more than
when she said old things over and over again to Monna Lisa.

"Naldo said I was never to tell about that," she said, doubtfully. "Do
you think he would not be angry if I told you?"

"It is right that you should tell me. Tell me everything," said Romola,
looking at her with mild authority.

If the impression from Naldo's command had been much more recent than it
was, the constraining effect of Romola's mysterious authority would have
overcome it. But the sense that she was telling what she had never told
before made her begin with a lowered voice.

"It was not in a church--it was at the Nativita, when there was a fair,
and all the people went overnight to see the Madonna in the Nunziata,
and my mother was ill and couldn't go, and I took the bunch of cocoons
for her; and then he came to me in the church and I heard him say,
`Tessa!' I knew him because he had taken care of me at the San
Giovanni, and then we went into the piazza where the fair was, and I had
some _berlingozzi_, for I was hungry and he was very good to me; and at
the end of the piazza there was a holy father, and an altar like what
they have at the processions outside the churches. So he married us,
and then Naldo took me back into the church and left me; and I went
home, and my mother died, and Nofri began to beat me more, and Naldo
never came back. And I used to cry, and once at the Carnival I saw him
and followed him, and he was angry, and said he would come some time, I
must wait. So I went and waited; but, oh! it was a long while before he
came; but he would have come if he could, for he was good; and then he
took me away, because I cried and said I could not bear to stay with
Nofri. And, oh! I was so glad, and since then I have been always
happy, for I don't mind about the goats and mules, because I have Lillo
and Ninna now; and Naldo is never angry, only I think he doesn't love
Ninna so well as Lillo, and she _is_ pretty."

Quite forgetting that she had though