“You love her so well, yet leave her.”
“Pietro, it is because I love her so dear that I have wandered all this weary road.”
This interesting colloquy was interrupted by the landlady crying from below, “Come down, you are wanted.” He went down, and there was Teresa again.
“Come with me, Ser Gerard.”
CHAPTER LVIII
Gerard walked silently beside Teresa, wondering in his own mind, after the manner of artists, what she was going to do with him; instead of asking her. So at last she told him of her own accord. A friend had informed her of a working goldsmith's wife who wanted a writer. “Her shop is hard by; you will not have far to go.”
Accordingly they soon arrived at the goldsmith's wife.
“Madama,” said Teresa, “Leonora tells me you want a writer: I have brought you a beautiful one; he saved my child at sea. Prithee look on him with favour.”
The goldsmith's wife complied in one sense. She fixed her eyes on Gerard's comely face, and could hardly take them off again. But her reply was unsatisfactory. “Nay, I have no use for a writer. Ah! I mind now, it is my gossip, Claelia, the sausage-maker, wants one; she told me, and I told Leonora.”