y on his side that
there was hardly room for fear. No; except the fear of having to do
many unpleasant things in order to save himself from what was yet more
unpleasant. And one of those unpleasant things must be done
immediately: it was very difficult.

"Do you mean to stay here?" he said.

"No," said Baldassarre, bitterly, "you mean to turn me out."

"Not so," said Tito; "I only ask."

"I tell you, you have turned me out. If it is your straw, you turned me
off it three years ago."

"Then you mean to leave this place?" said Tito, more anxious about this
certainty than the ground of it.

"I have spoken," said Baldassarre.

Tito turned and re-entered the house. Monna Lisa was nodding; he went
up to Tessa, and found her crying by the side of her baby.

"Tessa," he said, sitting down and taking her head between his hands;
"leave off crying, little goose, and listen to me."

He lifted her chin upward, that she might look at him, while he spoke
very distinctly and emphatically.

"You must never speak to that old man again. He is a mad old man, and
he wants to kill me. Never speak to him or listen to him again."

Tessa's tears had ceased, and her lips were pale with fright.

"Is he gone away?" she whispered.

"He will go away. Remember what I have said to you."

"Yes; I will never speak to a stranger any more," said Tessa, with a
sense of guilt.

He told her, to comfort her, that he would come again to-morrow; and
then went down to Monna Lisa to rebuke her severely for letting a
dangerous man come about the house.

Tito felt that these were odious tasks; they were very evil-tasted
morsels, but they were forced upon him. He heard Monna Lisa fasten the
door behind him, and turned away, without looking towards the open door
of the hovel. He felt secure that Baldassarre would go, and he could
not wait to see him go. Even _his_ young frame and elastic spirit were
shattered by the agitations that had been crowded into this single
evening.

Baldassarre was still sitting on the straw when the shadow of Tito
passed by. Before him lay the fragments of the broken dagger; beside
him lay the open book, over which he had pored in vain. They looked
like mocking symbols of his utter helplessness; and his body was still
too trembling for him to rise and walk away.

But the next morning, very early, when Tessa peeped anxiously through
the hole in her shutter, the door of the hovel was open, and the strange
o