The women would sing long songs, answering each other for an hour
at a time, but no one would hear them below, because the house was so
big.
By and by the work would be almost finished, and then it would be quite
done, and the wedding day would be very near. There Marietta's vision
of the future suddenly came to a climax, as she tried to imagine what
would happen when she should boldly declare that neither her father, nor
the Council of Ten, nor the Doge himself, nor even His Holiness Pope
Paul, who was a Venetian too, could ever make her marry Jacopo
Contarini. There would be such a convulsion of the family as had never
taken place since she was born. In her imagination she fancied all
Murano taking sides for her or against her; even Venice itself would be
amazed at the temerity of a girl who dared to refuse the husband her
father had chosen for her. It would be an outrage on all authority, a
scandal never to be forgotten, an unheard-of rebellion against the
natural law by which unmarried children were held in bondage as slaves
to their parents. But Marietta was not frightened by the tremendous
consequences her fancy deduced from her refusal to marry. She was happy.
Some day, the man she loved would know that she had faced the world for
him, rather than be bound to any one else, and he would love her all the
more dearly for having risked so much.
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