“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, because it was unaccompanied by any smile.