k it was so pretty, did you? It is like the little
Gesu, and I should think the Santa Madonna would be kinder to me now, is
it not true? But I have not much to ask for, because I have everything
now--only that I should see my husband oftener. You may hold the
bambino a little if you like, but I think you must not kiss him, because
you might hurt him."

She spoke this prohibition in a tone of soothing excuse, and Baldassarre
could not refuse to hold the small package. "Poor thing! poor thing!"
he said, in a deep voice which had something strangely threatening in
its apparent pity. It did not seem to him as if this guileless loving
little woman could reconcile him to the world at all, but rather that
she was with him against the world, that she was a creature who would
need to be avenged.

"Oh, don't you be sorry for me," she said; "for though I don't see him
often, he is more beautiful and good than anybody else in the world. I
say prayers to him when he's away. You couldn't think what he is!"

She looked at Baldassarre with a wide glance of mysterious meaning,
taking the baby from him again, and almost wishing he would question her
as if he wanted very much to know more.

"Yes, I could," said Baldassarre, rather bitterly.

"No, I'm sure you never could," said Tessa, earnestly. "You thought he
might be Nofri," she added, with a triumphant air of conclusiveness.
"But never mind; you couldn't know. What is your name?"

He rubbed his hand over his knitted brow, then looked at her blankly and
said, "Ah, child, what is it?"

It was not that he did not often remember his name well enough; and if
he had had presence of mind now to remember it, he would have chosen not
to tell it. But a sudden question appealing to his memory, had a
paralysing effect, and in that moment he was conscious of nothing but
helplessness.

Ignorant as Tessa was, the pity stirred in her by his blank look taught
her to say--

"_Never_ mind: you are a stranger, it is no matter about your having a
name. Good-bye now, because I want my breakfast. You will come here
and rest when you like; Monna Lisa says you may. And don't you be
unhappy, for we'll be good to you."

"Poor thing!" said Baldassarre again.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.

NO PLACE FOR REPENTANCE.

Messer Naldo came again sooner than was expected: he came on the evening
of the twenty-eighth of November, only eleven days after his previous
visit, proving that he had not g