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in canvas pants with bare feet, on the Pilar. Possibly with Juan.

We wrote to each other almost every day, me and Juan. He had already booked his place on the ship, he would arrive in Venice in a few months, we would be officially engaged. All in all who knows why mom worried about my reputation if my future husband laughed about the gossip and inferences, he knew how things were with him. Anyway, I wasn't married at the moment and it was my duty to please Mom by trying to be "normal." I would start this evening in the Avogadro house, I thought, wrapping myself in the silk of my Venetian shawl.

I dropped onto a step and looked disconsolately at the gondolas, barely illuminated by the light of the street lamps, swinging side by side in a row.

Nice mess I had made. Nice way to start a normal life of a girl.

In the Avogardo house I had sat between Luigino and Lodovico and sipping our Negroni we were talking about this and that when Alvise Loredan, elegant and stiff as always, stood in front of me and with his best smile: "So Adriana..."and immediately I had breathlessly taken the handkerchief from my bag to cover my mouth and while Alvise was saying: "...what are you doing?" looking him in the eye, I vomited.

Alvise with a start said "Oh!" he stiffened, turned and walked away. Still holding the handkerchief over my mouth, I ran to the bathroom, washed myself, cleaned up the traces of vomit on my dress. I found Lodovico and Luigino in the corridor, waiting for me and I immediately said: "I'm not drunk."

They knew I wasn't drunk, they reassured me. There must have been something about that Negroni that had upset my stomach. They felt sorry for me,...