lace at once."

Zorzi was silent, for the future looked black enough. He already saw
himself shut up in the glass-house for two long months, or not much
less, as effectually separated from Marietta by the narrow canal as if
an ocean were between them. She would never cross over and spend an hour
in the little garden then, and she would be under the care of Giovanni
Beroviero, who hated him, as he well knew.

CHAPTER VI

Aristarchi rose early, though it had been broad dawn when he had entered
his home. He lived not far from the house of the Agnus Dei, on the
opposite side of the same canal but beyond the Baker's Bridge. His house
was small and unpretentious, a little wooden building in two stories,
with a small door opening to the water and another at the back, giving
access to a patch of dilapidated and overgrown garden, whence a second
door opened upon a dismal and unsavoury alley. One faithful man, who had
followed him through many adventures, rendered him such services as he
needed, prepared the food he liked and guarded the house in his absence.
The fellow was far too much in awe of his terrible master to play the
spy or to ask inopportune questions.

The Greek put on the rich dress of a merchant captain of his own people,
the black coat, thickly embroidered with gold, the breeches of dark blue
cloth, the almost transparent linen shirt, open at the throat. A large
blue cap of silk and cloth was set far back on his head, showing all the
bony forehead, and his coal-black beard and shaggy hair had been combed
as smooth as their shaggy nature would allow. He wore a magnificent
belt fully two hands wide, in which were stuck three knives of
formidable length and breadth, in finely chased silver sheaths. His
muscular legs were encased in leathern gaiters, ornamented with gold and
silver, and on his feet he wore broad turned-up slippers from
Constantinople. The dress was much the same as that which the Turks had
found there a few years earlier, and which they soon amalgamated with
their own. It set off the captain's vast breadth of shoulder and massive
limbs, and as he stepped into his hired boat the idlers at the
water-stairs gazed upon him with an admiration of which he was well
aware, for besides being very splendidly dressed he looked as if he
could have swept them all into the canal with a turn of his hand.

Without saying whither he was bound he directed the oarsman through the
narrow channels until he re