way into the
knot of gazers. He had just had time to perceive that the distressed
voice came from a young contadina, whose white hood had fallen off in
the struggle to get her hands free from the grasp of a man in the
parti-coloured dress of a _cerretano_, or conjuror, who was making
laughing attempts to soothe and cajole her, evidently carrying with him
the amused sympathy of the spectators. These, by a persuasive variety
of words signifying simpleton, for which the Florentine dialect is rich
in equivalents, seemed to be arguing with the contadina against her
obstinacy. At the first moment the girl's face was turned away, and he
saw only her light-brown hair plaited and fastened with a long silver
pin; but in the next, the struggle brought her face opposite Tito's, and
he saw the baby features of Tessa, her blue eyes filled with tears, and
her under-lip quivering. Tessa, too, saw _him_, and through the mist of
her swelling tears there beamed a sudden hope, like that in the face of
a little child, when, held by a stranger against its will, it sees a
familiar hand stretched out.

In an instant Tito had pushed his way through the barrier of bystanders,
whose curiosity made them ready to turn aside at the sudden interference
of this handsome young signor, had grasped Tessa's waist, and had said,
"Loose this child! What right have you to hold her against her will?"

The conjuror--a man with one of those faces in which the angles of the
eyes and eyebrows, of the nostrils, mouth, and sharply-defined jaw, all
tend upward--showed his small regular teeth in an impish but not
ill-natured grin, as he let go Tessa's hands, and stretched out his own
backward, shrugging his shoulders, and bending them forward a little in
a half-apologetic, half-protesting manner.

"I mean the ragazza no evil in the world, Messere: ask this respectable
company. I was only going to show them a few samples of my skill, in
which this little damsel might have helped me the better because of her
kitten face, which would have assured them of open dealing; and I had
promised her a lapful of confetti as a reward. But what then? Messer
has doubtless better confetti at hand, and she knows it."

A general laugh among the bystanders accompanied these last words of the
conjuror, raised, probably, by the look of relief and confidence with
which Tessa clung to Tito's arm, as he drew it from her waist, and
placed her hand within it. She only cared about t