"It is not a fair exchange! She will look at the handsomest man in the world--hush! That is the truth.
And you will see a little, pale, red-haired girl with silly blue eyes, staring at you, her wide mouth open and her clumsy hands hanging down.
She will look like the wooden dolls they dress in the latest Venetian fashion to send to Paris every year, that the French courtiers may know what to wear! And her father will hurry her along, for fear that you should look too long at her and refuse to marry such a thing, even for Marco Polo's millions!" Contarini laughed carelessly at the description.
"Give me some wine," he said.

"We will drink her health." Arisa rose with the grace of a young goddess, her hair tumbling over her bare shoulders in a splendid golden confusion.

Contarini watched her with possessive eyes, as she went and came back, bringing him the drink.
She brought him yellow wine of Chios in a glass calix of Murano, blown air-thin upon a slender stem and just touched here and there with drops of tender blue.
"A health to the bride of Jacopo Contarini!" she said, with a ringing little laugh.
Then she set the wine to her lips, so that they were wet with it, and gave him the glass; and as she stooped to give it, her hair fell forward and almost hid her from him.
"A health to the shower of gold!" he said, and he drank.
She sat down beside him, crossing her feet like an Eastern woman, and he set the empty glass carelessly upon the marble floor, as though it had been a thing of no price.
"That glass was made at her father's furnace," he said.
"A pity he could not have made his daughter of glass too," answered Arisa.
"Graceful and silent ?" "And easily destroyed! But if I say that, you will think me jealous, and I am not.

She will bring you wealth.

I wish her a long life, long enough to understand that she has been sold to you for your good name, like a slave, as I was sold, but that you gave gold for me because you wanted me for myself, whereas you want nothing of her but her gold." "But for that--" Contarini seemed to be hesitating.