She was terribly disappointed and deeply offended by what seemed to her a deliberate insult; for she did not believe a word of Omobono's polite apology. The truth was that Zeno had only invited the party because her mother had invited herself in the hope of bringing him to the point of offering to marry Giustina. As a matter of fact nothing had ever been farther from his thoughts. Sebastian Polo, urged by his wife, had entered into the closest relations of business with Zeno, and had again and again given him a share in transactions that had been extraordinarily profitable. He had rendered it necessary for Zeno to see him often, and had made it easy by his constant hospitality; in these things lay the whole secret of Zeno's visits to his house. But seeing that matters did not take a matrimonial direction as quickly as she had expected, Polo's wife had adopted a course which she intended to make decisive; she had asked herself and her daughter to dine with Zeno. From this to hinting that he had compromised Giustina, and thence to extracting an offer of marriage, would be easy steps, familiar to every enterprising mother, since the beginning of the matrimonial ages. And that was a long time ago--even before Solomon's day, when the horseleech's two daughters cried, 'Give, give!' Zeno's value as a possible husband lay less in his fortune than in his very magnificent connections at home, and in the fact that the Emperor Charles had been his godfather and afterwards his friend and patron. Giustina understood her thoughtful parent's policy; she was therefore unhappy, and would eat no peacock, a circumstance which greatly distressed Omobono. Happily for him, the young woman's abstention was fully compensated by the readiness of the elder guests to partake of what she obstinately refused, even to something like repletion. While they ate, they talked; that is to say, Sebastian Polo and Marin Cornèr compared opinions on business matters such as the value of Persian silks, Greek wines, and white slaves, without giving away to each other the least thread of information that could be turned into money. And Polo's wife, who had an eye to the main chance, croaked a few words now and then, encouraging Cornèr to talk more freely of his affairs; perhaps, thought she, he might betray the secret of his wonderful success in obtaining from the Caucasus certain priceless furs which no merchant but he had ever been able to get. But though the fat dame lured him on to talk and made signs to have his glass filled again and again with Chian wine, and though the colours of a most beautiful sunset began to creep up his thin nose and his high cheek bones, as the rich evening light climbs in the western sky, Marin Cornèr's speech was as quiet and clear as ever, and what he said was, if anything, a trifle more cautious than before.