“The evil eye!” wailed the woman, flinging back inky hair from her brows. “He looked at the heart-of-my-life or he would not have fallen!”
“For shame!” protested Teresa indignantly. “He who carried him in his own arms! Ah, do not listen!” She turned to Gordon appealingly. “She is mad to say such things! Let us go,” she added hastily, as murmurs swelled from the shop. “We can do no more!”
“Go, son of the Black One!” screamed the woman. “Go before my child dies!”
Gordon had distinguished in the girl’s voice a note of pity and of fear for his safety, and a flash of smile softened the bitterness of his lips.
“You are right, Signorina,” he answered, and preceded her. The people parted as they passed, some peering maliciously, some shamefaced. Tita, bringing up the rear, glared about him, his fist clenched like a hammer. He knew well enough who the stranger was, but his signorina walked with him and that was sufficient. Tita knew what was expected of him.
It was growing dusky as they emerged. The group before the shop had run to watch the great surgeon alighting at the water-stairs. The dozen steps that brought them to the open piazzetta they walked in silence.
There Teresa paused, wishing to say she knew not what, burning with sympathy, yet timid with confusion. The street seemed to wear an unwonted, un-everyday luster, yet she knew that around the corner lay little Pasquale woefully hurt, in full view Tita was unlashing the gondola, and across the piazzetta she could see the entrance of the caffè where her father was sipping his cognac. A fear lest the latter should appear and find her absent from the gondola mixed with the wave of feeling with which she held out her hand to the man beside her.
“Poor little fig-merchant!” she said—the scene with the mother was too painfully recent to touch upon at once. “He watched for my gondola every day. I hope he is not badly hurt. What do you think, Signore?”
“No bones were broken,” he rejoined. “But as to internal injury, I could not tell. I shall hope doubly for him,” he added, “since you love him.”
Her eyes sought the ground, suddenly shy. “I have loved him from the first. You know, he cannot play like other children. He is lame; I think that is why I love him.”