d expression, and he discerned an opportunity for a new kind
of joke which required him to be cautious and solemn.

"Should you like to be married to me, Tessa?" said Tito, softly, half
enjoying the comedy, as he saw the pretty childish seriousness on her
face, half prompted by hazy previsions which belonged to the
intoxication of despair.

He felt her vibrating before she looked up at him and said, timidly,
"Will you let me?"

He answered only by a smile, and by leading her forward in front of the
_cerretano_, who, seeing an excellent jest in Tessa's evident delusion,
assumed a surpassing sacerdotal solemnity, and went through the mimic
ceremony with a liberal expenditure of _lingua furbesca_ or thieves'
Latin. But some symptoms of a new movement in the crowd urged him to
bring it to a speedy conclusion and dismiss them with hands outstretched
in a benedictory attitude over their kneeling figures. Tito, disposed
always to cultivate goodwill, though it might be the least select, put a
piece of four grossi into his hand as he moved away, and was thanked by
a look which, the conjuror felt sure, conveyed a perfect understanding
of the whole affair.

But Tito himself was very far from that understanding, and did not, in
fact, know whether, the next moment, he should tell Tessa of the joke
and laugh at her for a little goose, or whether he should let her
delusion last, and see what would come of it--see what she would say and
do next.

"Then you will not go away from me again," said Tessa, after they had
walked a few steps, "and you will take me to where you live." She spoke
meditatively, and not in a questioning tone. But presently she added,
"I must go back once to the Madre though, to tell her I brought the
cocoons, and that I am married, and shall not go back again."

Tito felt the necessity of speaking now; and in the rapid thought
prompted by that necessity, he saw that by undeceiving Tessa he should
be robbing himself of some at least of that pretty trustfulness which
might, by-and-by, be his only haven from contempt. It would spoil Tessa
to make her the least particle wiser or more suspicious.

"Yes, my little Tessa," he said, caressingly, "you must go back to the
Madre; but you must not tell her you are married--you must keep that a
secret from everybody; else some very great harm would happen to me, and
you would never see me again."

She looked up at him with fear in her face.

"You must go back an