“It is hot,” she complained.

“It will be cool in the church,” answered her father.  “Throw your veil back, my dear—­there 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 of curiosity, and through her veil Marietta looked again, till she saw his soft brown eyes scrutinising her appearance; then she turned quickly away, for she had looked long enough.  She saw that a woman in black was kneeling by the next pillar, watching her intently with a sort of cold stare that almost made her shudder.  Yet the woman