Even if it had not been the day of his betrothal, the incident would have been awkward and annoying. Yet it would be brutal—it was impossible—to drive Tessa away with harsh words. That accursed folly of his with the cerretano —that it should have lain buried in a quiet way for months, and now start up before him as this unseasonable crop of vexation! He could not speak harshly, but he spoke hurriedly.
“Tessa, I cannot—must not talk to you here. I will go on to the bridge and wait for you there. Follow me slowly.”
He turned and walked fast to the Ponte Rubaconte, and there leaned against the wall of one of the quaint little houses that rise at even distances on the bridge, looking towards the way by which Tessa would come.
It would have softened a much harder heart than Tito’s to see the little thing advancing with her round face much paled and saddened since he had parted from it at the door of the “Nunziata.”
Happily it was the least frequented of the bridges, and there were scarcely any passengers on it at this moment. He lost no time in speaking as soon as she came near him.
“Now, Tessa, I have very little time. You must not cry. Why did you follow me this morning? You must not do so again.”
“I thought,” said Tessa, speaking in a whisper, and struggling against a sob that would rise immediately at this new voice of Tito’s—“I thought you wouldn’t be so long before you came to take care of me again. And the patrigno beats me, and I can’t bear it any longer. And always when I come for a holiday I walk about to find you, and I can’t. Oh, please don’t send me away from you again! It has been so long, and I cry so now,