"No one can tell." Nell listened in mute surprise.

She had never seen Marietta with old Beroviero, and she was amazed to hear her young mistress talking about the processes of glass-making, about crucibles and cylinders and ingredients as familiarly as of domestic things.

She suddenly began to imagine that old Beroviero, who was probably a magician and an alchemist, had taught his daughter the same dangerous knowledge, and she felt a sort of awe before the two young people who knew such a vast deal which she herself could never know.
She asked herself what was to become of this wonderful girl, half woman and half enchantress, who brought the colour of the saints' blood out of the white flames, and understood as much as men did of the art which was almost all made up of secrets.

What would happen when she was the wife of Jacopo Contarini, shut up in a splendid Venetian palace where there were no glass furnaces to amuse her?
At first she would grow pale, thought Nella, but by and by would weave spells in her chamber which would bring all Venice to her will, and turn it all to gold and precious stones and red glass, and the people to fairies subject to her will, her husband, the Council of Ten, even the Doge himself.
Nella roused herself, and passed her hand over her eyes, as if she were waking from a dream.

And indeed she had been dreaming, for she had looked too long into the wonderful depths of the new colour, and it had dazed her wits..