Pasquale snarled something incomprehensible, by way of reply, and rose to let Giovanni out.  He noticed that the latter had brought nothing but the lamp with him.  When the door was open Pasquale looked across at the house, and saw that although there was still light in some of the other windows, Marietta’s window was now dark.  She was safe in bed, for Giovanni’s search had occupied more than an hour.

Marietta might have breathed somewhat more freely if she had known that her brother did not even suspect her of having been to the laboratory, but the knowledge would have been more than balanced by a still greater anxiety if she had been told that Zorzi could be accused of a common theft.

She sat up in the dark and pressed her throbbing temples with her hands.  She thought, if she thought at all, of getting up again and going back to the glass-house.  Pasquale would let her in, of course, and she could get the mantle back.  But there was Nella, in the next room, and Nella seemed to be always awake, and would hear her stirring and come in to know if she wanted anything.  Besides, she was in the dark.  The night light burned always in Nella’s room, a tiny wick supported by a bit of split cork in an earthen cup of oil, most carefully tended, for if it went out, it could only be lighted by going down to the hall where a large lamp burned all night.

Marietta laid her head upon the pillow and tried to sleep, repeating over and over again to herself that Zorzi was safe.  But for a long time the thought of the mantle haunted her.  Giovanni had found it, of course, and had brought it back with him.  In the morning he would send for her and demand an explanation, and she would have none to give.  She would have to admit that she had been in the laboratory—­it mattered little when—­and that she had forgotten her mantle there.  It would be useless to deny it.

Then all at once she looked the future in the face, and she saw a little light.  She would refuse to answer Giovanni’s questions, and when her father came back she would tell him everything.  She would tell him bravely that nothing could make her marry Contarini, that she loved Zorzi and would marry him, or no one.  The mantle would probably be forgotten in the angry discussion that would follow.  She hoped so, for even her father would never forgive her for having gone alone at night to find Zorzi.  If he ever found it out, he would make her spend the rest of her life in a convent, and it would break his heart that she should have thus cast all shame to the winds and brought disgrace on his old age.  It never occurred to her that he could look upon it in any other way.