"He needs neither yours nor mine," said Marietta, "and he trusts whom he
pleases."
"You seem inclined to defend his servants when they are insolent,"
answered Giovanni.
"For that matter, Zorzi is quite able to defend himself!" She turned her
back on her brother and went towards the stairs, taking Nella with her.
Giovanni glanced at her with annoyance and walked along the footway in
the direction of his own glass-house, glad to go back to a place where
he was absolute despot. But he had been really surprised that Marietta
should boldly take the Dalmatian's side against him, and his narrow
brain brooded upon the unexpected circumstance. Besides the dislike he
felt for the young artist, his small pride resented the thought that his
sister, who was to marry a Contarini, should condescend to the defence
of a servant.
Zorzi went his way calmly and spent the day in the laboratory. He was in
a frame of mind in which such speeches as Giovanni's could make but
little impression upon him, sensitive though he naturally was. Really
great sorrows, or great joys or great emotions, make smaller ones almost
impossible for the time. Men of vast ambition, whose deeds are already
moving the world and making history, are sometimes as easily annoyed by
trifles as a nervous woman; but he who knows that what is dearest to him
is slipping from his hold, or has just been taken, is half paralysed in
his sense of outward things.
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