f the object of the trip. She was
not to know that Jacopo Contarini would be standing beside the second
column on the left, watching her with lazily critical eyes; she was
merely told that she and her father were to dine in the house of a
certain Messer Luigi Foscarini, Procurator of Saint Mark, who was an old
and valued friend, though a near connection of Alvise Trevisan, a rival
glass-maker of Murano. All this had been carefully planned in order that
during their absence Beroviero's house might be suitably prepared for
the solemn family meeting which was to take place late in the afternoon,
and at which her betrothal was to be announced, but of which Marietta
knew nothing. Her father counted upon surprising her and perhaps
dazzling her, so as to avoid all discussion and all possibility of
resistance on her part. She should see Contarini in the church, and
while still under the first impression of his beauty and magnificence,
she should be told before her assembled family that she was solemnly
bound to marry him in two months' time.

Beroviero never expected opposition in anything he wished to do, but he
had always heard that young girls could find a thousand reasons for not
marrying the man their parents chose for them, and he believed that he
could make all argument and hesitation impossible. Marietta doubtless
expected to have a week in which to make up her mind. She should have
five hours, and even that was too much, thought Beroviero. He would have
preferred to march her to the altar without any preliminaries and marry
her to Contarini without giving her a chance of seeing him before the
ceremony. After all, that was the custom of the day.

The fortunes of love were in his favour, for Marietta had spent three
miserably unhappy days and nights since she had last talked with Zorzi
in the garden. From that time he had avoided her moat carefully, never
coming out of the laboratory when she was under the tree with her work,
never raising his eyes to look at her when she came in and talked with
her father. When she entered the big room, he made a solemn bow and
occupied himself in the farthest corner so long as she remained. There
is a stage in which even the truest and purest love of boy and maiden
feeds on misunderstandings. In a burst of tears, and ashamed that she
should be seen crying, Marietta had bidden him go away; in the folly of
his young heart he took her at her word, and avoided her consistently.
He had bee