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 been hurt by the words, but by a kind of unconscious selfishness his pain helped him to do what he believed to be his duty.

And Marietta forgot that he had picked up the rose dropped by her in the path, she forgot that she had seen him stand gazing up at her window, with a look that could mean only love, she forgot how tenderly and softly he had answered her in the garden; she only remembered that she had done her utmost, and too much, to make him tell her that he loved her, and in vain.  She could not forgive him that, for even after three days her cheeks burned fiercely whenever she thought of it.  After that, it mattered nothing what became of her, whether she were betrothed, or whether she were married, or whether she went mad, or even whether she died—­that would be the best of all.

In this mood Marietta entered the gondola and seated herself by her father on Sunday morning.  She wore an embroidered gown of olive green, a little open at her dazzling throat, and a silk mantle of a darker tone hung from her shoulders, to protect her from the sun rather than from the air.  Her russet hair was plaited in a thick flat braid, and brought round her head like a broad coronet of red gold, and a point lace veil, pinned upon it with stoat gold pins, hang down behind and was brought forward carelessly upon one shoulder.

Beside her, Angelo Beroviero was splendid in dark red cloth and purple silk.  He was proud of his daughter, who was betrothed to the heir of a great Venetian house, he was proud of his own achievements, of his wealth, of the richly furnished gondola, of his two big young oarsmen in quartered yellow and blue hose and snowy shirts, and of his liveried man in blue and gold, who sat outside the low ‘felse’ on a little stool, staff in hand, ready to attend upon his master and young mistress whenever they should please to go on foot.