is no one to see you."

"There is the sun," she said, for she had been taught that one of a
Venetian lady's chief beauties is her complexion.

"Well, well--there will be no sun in the church." And the old man
hurried her in, without bestowing a glance upon the bronze horses over
the door, to admire which he generally stopped a few moments in passing.

They entered the great church, and the servant went before them, dipped
his fingers in the basin and offered them holy water. They crossed
themselves, and Marietta bent one knee, looking towards the high altar.
A score of people were scattered about, kneeling and standing in the
nave.

Contarini was leaning against the second pillar on the left, and had
been watching the door when Marietta and her father entered. Beroviero
saw him at once, but led his daughter up the opposite side of the nave,
knelt down beside her a moment at the screen, then crossed and came down
the aisle, and at last turned into the nave again by the second pillar,
so as to come upon Contarini as it were unawares. This all seemed
necessary to him in order that Marietta should receive a very strong and
sudden impression, which should leave no doubt in her mind. Contarini
himself was too thoroughly Venetian not to understand what Beroviero was
doing, and when the two came upon him, he was drawn up to his full
height, one gloved hand holding his cap and resting on his hip; the
other, gloveless, and white as a woman's, was twisting his silky
mustache. Beroviero had manoeuvred so cleverly that Marietta almost
jostled the young patrician as she turned the pillar.

Contarini drew back with quick grace and a slight inclination of his
body, and then pretended the utmost surprise on seeing his valued friend
Messer Angelo Beroviero.

"My most dear sir!" he exclaimed. "This is indeed good fortune!"

"Mine, Messer Jacopo!" returned Beroviero with equally well-feigned
astonishment.

Marietta had looked Contarini full in the face before she had time to
draw her veil across her own. She stepped back and placed herself behind
her father, protected as it were by their serving-man, who stood beside
her with his staff. She understood instantly that the magnificent
patrician was the man of whom her father had spoken as her future
husband. Seen, as she had seen him, in the glowing church, in the most
splendid surroundings that could be imagined, he was certainly a man at
whom any woman would look twice, even out o