But even for the most impatient, time may not tarry indefinitely, and
the lagging moments had at last brought round that festa of San Marco
which meant so much for Venice, with its splendid pageants for the
Church, its festivities for the people, its fluttering of doves in the
Piazza, and of timid, eager maiden hearts, waiting in a sort of shy
assurance for that earliest Venetian love-token, the _boccolo_--the
rosebud which breathed the secret of many a young Venetian lover to his
_inamorata_ under those April skies, on the festa of this patron saint
of Venice.
And the next morning the stately lady of the Giustiniani stood quite
alone on the balcony of the great palace at the bend of the Canal
Grande, leaning upon her gold-embroidered cushions to watch the gondola
that was just landing at the step of the Piazzetta; the restless
movements of her tapering jeweled fingers were the only sign of an
emotion she rarely betrayed, though doubtless, under the faultless
dignity of her bearing, there were often currents of feeling and
thwartings hard to be endured.
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