Bardo paused a few moments, but his silence was evidently charged with some idea that he was hesitating to express, for he once leaned forward a little as if he were going to speak, then turned his head aside towards Romola and sank backward again. At last, as if he had made up his mind, he said in a tone which might have become a prince giving the courteous signal of dismissal—
“I am somewhat fatigued this morning, and shall prefer seeing you again tomorrow, when I shall be able to give you the secretary’s answer, authorising you to present yourself to him at some given time. But before you go,”—here the old man, in spite of himself, fell into a more faltering tone—“you will perhaps permit me to touch your hand? It is long since I touched the hand of a young man.”
Bardo had stretched out his aged white hand, and Tito immediately placed his dark but delicate and supple fingers within it. Bardo’s cramped fingers closed over them, and he held them for a few minutes in silence. Then he said—
“Romola, has this young man the same complexion as thy brother—fair and pale?”
“No, father,” Romola answered, with determined composure, though her heart began to beat violently with mingled emotions. “The hair of Messere is dark—his complexion is dark.” Inwardly she said, “Will he mind it? will it be disagreeable? No, he looks so gentle and good-natured.” Then aloud again—
“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.