The housekeeper had her little room up there, and could watch the sewing-women at their work and scold them if they were idle, noting how much should be taken from their pay.

The women would sing long songs, answering each other for an hour at a time, but no one would hear them below, because the house was so big.
By and by the work would be almost finished, and then it would be quite done, and the wedding day would be very near.

There Marietta's vision of the future suddenly came to a climax, as she tried to imagine what would happen when she should boldly declare that neither her father, nor the Council of Ten, nor the Doge himself, nor even His Holiness Pope Paul, who was a Venetian too, could ever make her marry Jacopo Contarini.

There would be such a convulsion of the family as had never taken place since she was born.

In her imagination she fancied all Murano taking sides for her or against her; even Venice itself would be amazed at the temerity of a girl who dared to refuse the husband her father had chosen for her.