three were often
together all day in the room where Angelo had set up a little furnace
for making experiments. In the year 1470 it was not lawful in Murano to
teach any foreign person the art of glass-making; for the glass-blowers
were a sort of nobility, and nearly a hundred years had passed since the
Council had declared that patricians of Venice might marry the
daughters of glass-workers without affecting their own rank or that of
their children. But old Beroviero declared that he was not teaching
Zorzi anything, that the young fellow was his servant and not his
apprentice, and did nothing but keep up the fire in the furnace, and
fetch and carry, grind materials, and sweep the floor. It was quite true
that Zorzi did all these things, and he did them with a silent
regularity that made him indispensable to his master, who scarcely
noticed the growing skill with which the young man helped him at every
turn, till he could be entrusted to perform the most delicate operations
in glass-working without any especial instructions. Intent upon artistic
matters, the old man was hardly aware, either, that Marietta had learned
much of his art; or if he realised the fact he felt a sort of jealous
satisfaction in the thought that she liked to be shut up with him for
hours at a time, quite out of sight of the world and altogether out of
harm's way. He fancied that she grew more like him from day to day, and
he flattered himself that he understood her. She and Zorzi were the only
beings in his world who never irritated him, now that he had them always
under his eye and command. It was natural that he should suppose himself
to be profoundly acquainted with their two natures, though he had never
taken the smallest pains to test this imaginary knowledge. Possibly, in
their different ways, they knew him better than he knew them.

The glass-house was guarded from outsiders as carefully as a nunnery,
and somewhat resembled a convent in having no windows so situated that
curious persons might see from without what went on inside. The place
was entered by a low door from the narrow paved path that ran along the
canal. In a little vestibule, ill-lighted by one small grated window,
sat the porter, an uncouth old man who rarely answered questions, and
never opened the door until he had assured himself by a deliberate
inspection through the grating that the person who knocked had a right
to come in. Marietta remembered him in his den when she had