"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.