and his clothes are tidy: Monna Lisa says he is a decent man. But sometimes I think he is not in his right mind: Lupo, at Peretola, was not in his right mind, and he looks a little like Lupo sometimes, as if he didn’t know where he was.”
“What sort of face has he?” said Tito, his heart beginning to beat strangely. He was so haunted by the thought of Baldassarre, that it was already he whom he saw in imagination sitting on the straw not many yards from him. “Fetch your stool, my Tessa, and sit on it.”
“Shall you not forgive me?” she said, timidly, moving from his knee.
“Yes, I will not be angry—only sit down, and tell me what sort of old man this is.”
“I can’t think how to tell you: he is not like my stepfather Nofri, or anybody. His face is yellow, and he has deep marks in it; and his hair is white, but there is none on the top of his head: and his eyebrows are black, and he looks from under them at me, and says, ‘Poor thing!’ to me, as if he