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 consolation to a born coward as a logical reason for not doing what he is afraid to do.
But Giovanni promised himself that he would make his sister pay dearly for having defied him, and as he had also made up his mind to have Zorzi removed to the house, on pretence of curing his hurt, but in reality in order to search for the precious manuscripts, it would be impossible for Marietta to commit the same piece of folly a second time.

But she should pay for the affront she had put upon him.
He accordingly came back to the footway and walked along toward his own glass-house; and the boy, who had finished washing his face, smoothed his hair with his wet fingers and followed him, having seen and understood all that had happened.
Marietta sent Pasquale on, to tell Zorzi that she was coming, and when she reached the laboratory he was sitting in the master's big chair, with his foot on a stool before him.

His face was pale and drawn from the suffering of the past twenty-four hours, and from time to time he was still in great pain.

As Marietta entered, he looked up with a grateful smile.
"You seem glad to see us after all," she said.