Roma looked up again. His face was still calm and solemn.
"He gave her away, you say?"
"Yes. When the treacherous letter came from Italy he could not resist
it. It was like a cry from the buried-alive calling upon him to break
down the door of their tomb. But what could he do with the child? To take
her with him was impossible. A neighbour came--a fellow-countryman--he
kept a baker's shop in the Italian quarter. 'I'm only a poor man,' he
said, 'but I've got a little daughter of the same age as yours, and two
sticks will burn better than one. Give the child to me and do as your
heart bids you!' It was like a light from heaven. He saw his way at
last."
Roma listened with head aside.
"One day he took the child and washed her pretty face and combed her
glossy hair, telling her she was going to see another little girl and
would play with her always. And the child was in high glee and laughed
and chattered and knew no difference. It was evening when we set out for
the stranger's house, and in the twilight of the little streets
happy-hearted mothers were calling to their children to come in to go to
bed. The doctor sent me into a shop to buy a cake for the little one,
and she ate it as she ran and skipped by her father's side."
Roma was holding her breath.
"The baker's shop was poor but clean, and his own little girl was
playing on the hearthrug with her cups and saucers. And before we were
aware of it two little tongues were cackling and gobbling together, and
the little back-parlour was rippling over with a merry twitter. The
doctor stood and looked down at the children, and his eyes shone with a
glassy light. 'You are very good, sir,' he said, 'but she is good too,
and she'll be a great comfort and joy to you always.' And the man said,
'She'll be as right as a trivet, doctor, and you'll be right too--you'll
be made triumvir like Mazzini, when the republic is proclaimed, and then
you'll send for the child, and for me too, I daresay.' But I could see
that the doctor was not listening. 'Let us slip away now,' I said, and
we stole out somehow."
Roma's eyes were moistening, and the little tool was trembling in her
hand.
There was silence for some moments, and then from without, muffled by
the walls it passed through, there came the sound of voices. The nuns
and children of Trinità de' Monti were singing their Benediction--Ora
pro nobis!