Page:Maurice Hewlett--Little novels of Italy.djvu/25

Rh Se ti trovassi qualche dama nuova, L'ha da saper che tua dama son io."

So sang she, innocently enough, whose sweethearting went no farther than her artless lips. There was not a spice of mischief in the girl. What she had told La Testolina had been no more than the truth: Master Baldassare was good to her—better than you would have believed possible in such a crabbed old stub of a man. He was more of a father to her than ever Don Urbano had been to anything save his own belly; but it was incontestable that he was not father to anything else. That alone might have been a grievance for Vanna, but there is no evidence that it was. Baldassare was by nature gruff, by habit close-fisted: like all such men, the more he felt the deeper he hoarded the thought under his ribs. The most he would venture would be a hand on her hair and a grunt when she did well; so sure as she looked up gratefully at him the old man drew off, with puckered brows and jaws working together. He may have been ashamed of his weakness; it is dead certain that no one in Verona, least of all Vanna herself, suspected him of any affection for his young wife. Mostly he was silent; thus she became silent too whenever he was in the house. This was against nature, for by ordinary her little songs bubbled from her like a bird's. But to see him so glum and staring within doors awed her: she set a finger to her lips as she felt the tune on her tongue, and went about her business mute. Baldassare would go abroad, stooping under his pack: she took her seat at the shop-door, threaded