. "You see how generous Zorzi is!"

"Generous!" Beroviero shook his head. "He is trying to bribe me, for
there is a fortune in his glass, as he says. He is offering me a
fortune, I tell you, to let him marry you!"

"The fortune which Messer Jacopo had made you promise to pay him for
condescending to be my husband!" retorted Marietta triumphantly. "It
seems to me that of the two, Zorzi is the better match!"

Beroviero stared at her a moment, bewildered. Then, in half-comic
despair he clapped both his hands upon his ears and shook himself gently
free from her.

"Was there ever a woman yet who could not make black seem white?" he
cried. "It is nonsense, I tell you! It is all arrant nonsense! You are
driving me out of my senses!"

And thereupon he went off down the garden path to the laboratory,
apparently forgetting that his presence alone could prevent a repetition
of that very offence which had at first roused his anger. The door
closed sharply after him, with energetic emphasis.

At the same moment Marietta, who had been gazing into Zorzi's eyes, felt
that her own sparkled with amusement, and her father might almost have
heard her sweet low laugh through the open window at the other end of
the garden.

"That was well done," she said. "Between us we have almost persuaded
him."

Zorzi took her willing hand and drew her to him, and she was almost as
near to him as before, when she straightened herself with quick and
elastic grace, and laughed again.

"No, no!" she said. "If he were to look out and see us again, it would
be too ridiculous! Come and sit under the plane-tree in the old place.
Do you remember how you stared at the trunk and would not answer me when
I tried to make you speak, ever so long ago? Do you know, it was because
you would not say--what I wanted you to say--that I let myself think
that I could marry Messer Jacopo. If you had only known what you were
doing!"

"If I had only known!" Zorzi echoed, as they reached the place and
Marietta sat down.

They were within sight of the window, but Beroviero did not heed them.
He was seated in his own chair, in deep thought, his elbows resting on
the wooden arms, his fingers pressing his temples on each side, thinking
of his daughter, and perhaps not quite unaware that she was talking to
the only man he had ever really trusted.

"I must tell you something, Zorzi," she was saying, as she looked up
into the face she loved. "My father told me last night