"If you knew what I know, you would understand." "But I do not." Zorzi went back to his furnace, Marietta exchanged a few words with her father and left the room again to go home.
In the garden she paused a moment by the rose-bush, where she had talked with Zorzi, but there was not even the shadow of a smile in her face now.

She went down the dark corridor and called the porter, who roused himself, opened the door and hailed the house opposite.

A woman looked out in the evening light, nodded and disappeared.

A few seconds later she came out of the house, a quiet little middle-aged creature in brown, with intelligent eyes, and she crossed the shaky wooden bridge over the canal to come and bring Marietta home.

It would have been a scandalous thing if the daughter of Angelo Beroviero had been seen by the neighbours to walk a score of paces in the street without an attendant.
She had thrown a hood of dark green cloth over her head, and the folds hung below her shoulders, half hiding her graceful figure.