authorising you to present yourself to him at some given time. But
before you go,"--here the old man, in spite of himself, fell into a more
faltering tone--"you will perhaps permit me to touch your hand? It is
long since I touched the hand of a young man."

Bardo had stretched out his aged white hand, and Tito immediately placed
his dark but delicate and supple fingers within it. Bardo's cramped
fingers closed over them, and he held them for a few minutes in silence.
Then he said--

"Romola, has this young man the same complexion as thy brother--fair and
pale?"

"No, father," Romola answered, with determined composure, though her
heart began to beat violently with mingled emotions. "The hair of
Messere is dark--his complexion is dark." Inwardly she said, "Will he
mind it? will it be disagreeable? No, he looks so gentle and
good-natured." Then aloud again--

"Would Messere permit my father to touch his hair and face?"

Her eyes inevitably made a timid entreating appeal while she asked this,
and Tito's met them with soft brightness as he said, "Assuredly," and,
leaning forward, raised Bardo's hand to his curls, with a readiness of
assent, which was the greater relief to her, because it was
unaccompanied by any sign of embarrassment.

Bardo passed his hand again and again over the long curls and grasped
them a little, as if their spiral resistance made his inward vision
clearer; then he passed his hand over the brow and cheek, tracing the
profile with the edge of his palm and fourth finger, and letting the
breadth of his hand repose on the rich oval of the cheek.

"Ah," he said, as his hand glided from the face and rested on the young
man's shoulder. "He must be very unlike thy brother, Romola: and it is
the better. You see no visions, I trust, my young friend?"

At this moment the door opened, and there entered, unannounced, a tall
elderly man in a handsome black silk lucco, who, unwinding his becchetto
from his neck and taking off his cap, disclosed a head as white as
Bardo's. He cast a keen glance of surprise at the group before him--the
young stranger leaning in that filial attitude, while Bardo's hand
rested on his shoulder, and Romola sitting near with eyes dilated by
anxiety and agitation. But there was an instantaneous change: Bardo let
fall his hand, Tito raised himself from his stooping posture, and Romola
rose to meet the visitor with an alacrity which implied all the greater
intimacy, becaus