make grow in such a place, watering them from a disused rain-water
cistern that was supposed to have been poisoned long ago. Here Marietta
often sat in the shade, when the laboratory was too close and hot, and
when the time was at hand during which even the men would not be able to
work on account of the heat, and the furnace would be put out and
repaired, and every one would be set to making the delicate clay pots in
which the glass was to be melted. Marietta could sit silent and
motionless in her seat under the plane-tree for a long time when she was
thinking, and she never told any one her thoughts.


She was not unlike her father in looks, and that was doubtless the
reason why he assumed that she must be like him in character. No one
would have said that she was handsome, but sometimes, when she smiled,
those who saw that rare expression in her face thought she was
beautiful. When it was gone, they said she was cold. Fortunately, her
hair was not red, as her father's had been or she might sometimes have
seemed positively ugly; it was of that deep ruddy, golden brown that one
may often see in Venice still, and there was an abundance of it, though
it was drawn straight back from her white forehead and braided into the
smallest possible space, in the fashion of that time. There was often a
little colour in her face, though never much, and it was faint, yet
very fresh, like the tint within certain delicate shells; her lips were
of the same hue, but stronger and brighter, and they were very well
shaped and generally closed, like her father's. But her eyes were not
like his, and the lids and lashes shaded them in such a way that it was
hard to guess their colour, and they had an inscrutable, reserved look
that was hard to meet for many seconds. Zorzi believed that they were
grey, but when he saw them in his dreams they were violet; and one day
she opened them wide for an instant, at something old Beroviero said to