witticisms, in order to dispel her gloom. But
I rarely succeeded in waking a smile on her fair lips. Her replies were
always sensible, decorous, ingenious, and acute. While debating some
knotty point which admitted controversy, she forgot to work, left her
needle sticking in the stuff, looked me earnestly in the face and
listened to my remarks as though she were reading a book which compelled
her to concentrate her mind. Flattering suggestions filled my head. I
sought to extinguish them, and grew still more abstemious in the
indulgence of our colloquies.

More than a month had passed in this way, when I noticed, on opening a
conversation of the usual kind, that the young woman gazed hard at me
and blushed a little, without my being able to assign any cause for her
blushes. A few indifferent sentences were exchanged. Still I perceived
her to be restless and impatient, as though she were annoyed by my
keeping to generalities and not saying something she was waiting for. I
did not, and really could not, make it out. I might have imagined she
was expecting a declaration. But she did not look like a woman of that
sort, and I was neither bold nor eager enough to risk it. At length I
thought it best to remark that I saw she had things to think over, and
that I would not infringe upon her leisure further. I bowed, and was
about to take my leave. "Please, do not go!" she exclaimed in some
distress, and rising at the same time from her chair: "Did you not
receive, two days ago, a note from me in answer to one of yours,
together with a miniature?" "What note? What answer? What miniature?"
cried I in astonishment: "I know nothing about the matter." "Are you
telling the truth?" she asked, turning pale as she spoke. I assured her
on my honour that I did not know what she referred to. "Good God!" she
said with a sigh, and sinking back half-fainting on her chair: "Unhappy
me! I am betrayed." "But what is it all about?" continued I, in a low
voice, from my window, truly grieved to be unable to assist her.
Ultimately, after a pause of profound discouragement, she rose and said
that in her position she had extreme need of advice. She had obtained
her husband's permission to go that day after dinner to visit an aunt of
hers, a nun, on the Giudecca. Therefore she begged me to repair at
twenty-one o'clock to the _sotto portico_ by the _ponte storto_ at S.
Apollinare.[4] There I should see, waiting or arriving, a gondola with a
white handker