Tessa started to her feet and looked round.
“See,” said Romola, clasping the beads on Tessa’s neck, “God has sent me to you again.”
The poor thing screamed and sobbed, and clung to the arms that fastened the necklace. She could not speak. The two children came from their corner, laid hold of their mother’s skirts, and looked up with wide eyes at Romola.
That day they all went home to Monna Brigida’s, in the Borgo degli Albizzi. Romola had made known to Tessa, by gentle degrees, that Naldo could never come to her again: not because he was cruel, but because he was dead.
“But be comforted, my Tessa,” said Romola. “I am come to take care of you always. And we have got Lillo and Ninna.”
Monna Brigida’s mouth twitched in the struggle between her awe of Romola and the desire to speak unseasonably.
“Let be, for the present,” she thought; “but it seems to me a thousand years till I tell this little contadina , who seems not to know how many fingers she’s got on her hand, who Romola is. And I will tell her some day, else she’ll never know her place. It’s all very well for Romola;—nobody will call their souls their own when she’s by; but if I’m to have this puss-faced minx living in my house she must be humble to me.”
However, Monna Brigida wanted to give the children too many sweets for their supper, and confessed to Romola, the last thing before going to bed, that it would be a shame not to take care of such cherubs.
“But you must give up to me a little, Romola, about their eating, and those things. For you have never had a baby, and I had twins, only they died as soon as they were born.”