you frightened her."

"What? What is this?" Giovanni looked from one to the other. "Then where
are you going?"

"To the glass-house," answered Marietta with perfect coolness.

"You are not going to the laboratory? Zorzi is living there alone. You
cannot go there."

"I am not afraid of Zorzi. In the first place, I wish to know how he is.
Secondly, this is the hour for making the tests, and as he cannot stand
he cannot try the glass alone."

Giovanni was amazed at her assurance, and immediately assumed a grave
and authoritative manner befitting the eldest brother who represented
the head of the house.

"I cannot allow you to go," he said. "It is most unbecoming. Our father
would be shocked. Go back at once, and never think of going to the
laboratory while Zorzi is there. Do you hear?"

"Yes. Come, Nella," she added, taking her serving-woman by the arm.

Before Giovanni realised what she was going to do, she was walking
quickly across the wooden bridge towards the glass-house, holding
Nella's sleeve, to keep her from lagging, and Nella trotted beside her
mistress like a frightened lamb, led by a string. Giovanni did not
attempt to follow at first, for he was utterly nonplussed by his
sister's behaviour. He rarely knew what to do when any one openly defied
him. He stood still, staring after the two, and saw Marietta tap upon
the door of the glass-house. It opened almost immediately and they
disappeared within.

As soon as they were out of sight, his anger broke out, and he made a
few quick steps on the bridge. Then he stopped, for he was afraid to
make a scandal. That at least was what he said to himself, but the fact
was that he was afraid to face his sister, who was infinitely braver and
cooler than he. Besides, he reflected that he could not now prevent her
from going to the laboratory, since she was already there, and that it
would be very undignified to make a scene before Zorzi, who was only a
servant after all. This last consideration consoled him greatly. In the
eyes of the law, and therefore in Giovanni's, Zorzi was a hired servant.
Now, socially speaking, a servant was not a man; and since Zorzi was not
a man, and Marietta was therefore gone with one servant to a place,
belonging to her father, where there was another servant, to go thither
and forcibly bring her back would either be absurd, or else it would
mean that Zorzi had acquired a new social rank, which was absurd also.
There is no such consolat