you got it;--from a little woman named Tessa, is it
not true?"

"Ah! if you know her," said Bratti, "and would redeem it of me at a
small profit, and give it her again, you'd be doing a charity, for she
cried at parting with it--you'd have thought she was running into a
brook. It's a small profit I'll charge you. You shall have it for a
florin, for I don't like to be hard-hearted."

"Where is she?" said Romola, giving him the money, and unclasping the
necklace from the basket in joyful agitation.

"Outside the gate there, at the other end of the Borgo, at old Sibilla
Manetti's: anybody will tell you which is the house."

Romola went along with winged feet, blessing that incident of the
Carnival which had made her learn by heart the appearance of this
necklace. Soon she was at the house she sought. The young woman and
the children were in the inner room--were to have been fetched away a
fortnight ago and more--had no money, only their clothes, to pay a poor
widow with for their food and lodging. But since madonna knew them--
Romola waited to hear no more, but opened the door.

Tessa was seated on the low bed: her crying had passed into tearless
sobs, and she was looking with sad blank eyes at the two children, who
were playing in an opposite corner--Lillo covering his head with his
skirt and roaring at Ninna to frighten her, then peeping out again to
see how she bore it. The door was a little behind Tessa, and she did
not turn round when it opened, thinking it was only the old woman:
expectation was no longer alive. Romola had thrown aside her veil and
paused a moment, holding the necklace in sight. Then she said, in that
pure voice that used to cheer her father--

"Tessa!"

Tessa started to her feet and looked round.

"See," said Romola, clasping the beads on Tessa's neck, "God has sent me
to you again."

The poor thing screamed and sobbed, and clung to the arms that fastened
the necklace. She could not speak. The two children came from their
corner, laid hold of their mother's skirts, and looked up with wide eyes
at Romola.

That day they all went home to Monna Brigida's, in the Borgo degli
Albizzi. Romola had made known, to Tessa by gentle degrees, that Naldo
could never come to her again: not because he was cruel, but because he
was dead.

"But be comforted, my Tessa," said Romola. "I am come to take care of
you always. And we have got Lillo and Ninna."

Monna Brigida's mouth twitched in