At the very moment when the coming day was breaking upon her heart's twilight, a wall of darkness arose between her and the future.
Much that is very good and true in the world is built upon the fanciful fears of evil that warn girls' hearts of harm.

There are dangers that cannot be exaggerated, because the value of what they threaten cannot be reckoned too great, so long as human goodness rests on the dangerous quicksands of human nature.
Marietta had not realised what it meant to be betrothed to Jacopo Contarini, until she had let her hand linger in Zorzi's.

But after that, one hour had not passed before she felt that she was living between two alternatives that seemed almost equally terrible, and of which she must choose the one or the other within two months.

She must either marry Contarini and never see Zorzi again, or she must refuse to be married and face the tremendous consequences of her unheard-of wilfulness, her father's anger, the just resentment of all the Contarini family, the humiliation which her brothers would heap upon her, because, in the code of those days, she would have brought shame on them and theirs.

In those times such results were very real and inevitable when a girl's formal promise of marriage was broken, though she herself might never have been consulted.
It was no wonder that Marietta was sleepless at night, and spent long hours of the day sitting listless by her window without so much as threading a score of beads from the little basket that stood beside her.
Nella came and went often, looked at her, and shook her head with a wise smile.
"It is the thought of marriage," said the woman of the people to herself.