The girl is not like most of her sex, and she takes sudden offence when there is question of her appearance.

Indeed, the mask she wears is as much to hide a face that has little to tempt the eye, as from any wish at concealment." "Since Gino has entered frankly into the matter," resumed the quick-witted Calabrian, cheerfully, and with an air of sudden confidence to the expectant Annina, "I begin to see more probability of our understanding each other's meaning.

Deign, bella donna, to go into my poor cabin, where we will speak more at our ease, and something more to our mutual profit and mutual security." Annina was not without secret doubts, but she suffered the padrone to lead her to the stairs of the cabin, as if she were disposed to descend.
Her back was no sooner turned, than Gino slid into the gondola, which one shove of his vigorous arm sent far beyond the leap of man.

The action was sudden, rapid, and noiseless; but the jealous eye of Annina detected the escape of the gondolier, though not in time to prevent it.
Without betraying uneasiness, she submitted to be led below, as if the whole were done by previous concert.
"Gino has said that you have a boat which will do the friendly office to put me on the quay when our conference is over," she remarked, with a presence of mind that luckily met the expedient of her late companion.
"The felucca itself should do that much, were there want of other means," gallantly returned the manner when they disappeared in the cabin.
Free to discharge his duty, Gino now plied his task with redoubled zeal.
The light boat glided among the vessels, inclining, by the skilful management of his single oar, in a manner to avoid all collision, until it entered the narrow canal which separates the palace of the Doge from the more beautiful and classic structure that contains the prisons of the Republic.

The bridge which continues the communication of the quays, was first passed, and then he was stealing beneath that far-famed arch which supports a covered gallery leading from the upper story of the palace into that of the prisons, and which, from its being appropriated to the passage of the accused from their cells to the presence of their judges, has been so poetically, and it may be added so pathetically, called the Bridge of Sighs.
The oar of Gino now relaxed its efforts, and the gondola approached a flight of steps over which, as usual, the water cast its little waves.
Stepping on the lowest flag, he thrust a small iron spike to which a cord was attached, into a crevice between two of the stones, and left his boat to the security of this characteristic fastening.