As for the architect himself, he surveyed Orsino with a sort of sympathetic curiosity which the latter would have thought unpleasantly familiar if he had understood it.  Contini had never spoken before with any more exalted personage than Del Ferice, and he studied the young aristocrat as though he were a being from another world.  He hesitated some time as to the proper mode of addressing him and at last decided to call him “Signor Principe.”  Orsino seemed quite satisfied with this, and the architect was inwardly pleased when the young man said “Signor Contini” instead of Contini alone.  It was quite clear that Del Ferice had already acquainted him with all the details of the situation, for he seemed to understand all the documents at a glance, picking out and examining the important clauses with unfailing acuteness, and pointing with his finger to the place where Orsino was to sign his name.

At the end of the interview Orsino shook hands with Del Ferice and thanked him warmly for his kindness, after which, he and his partner went out together.  They stood side by side upon the pavement for a few seconds, each wondering what the other was going to say.

“Perhaps we had better go and look at the house, Signor Principe,” observed Contini, in the midst of an ineffectual effort to light the stump of his cigar.

“I think so, too,” answered Orsino, realising that since he had acquired the property it would be as well to know how it looked.  “You see I have trusted my adviser entirely in the matter, and I am ashamed to say I do not know where the house is.”

Andrea Contini looked at him curiously.

“This is the first time that you have had anything to do with business of this kind, Signor Principe,” he observed.  “You have fallen into good hands.”

“Yours?” inquired Orsino, a little stiffly.

“No.  I mean that Count Del Ferice is a good adviser in this matter.”

“I hope so.”

“I am sure of it,” said Contini with conviction.  “It would be a great surprise to me if we failed to make a handsome profit by this contract.”

“There is luck and ill-luck in everything,” answered Orsino, signalling to a passing cab.

The two men exchanged few words as they drove up to the new quarter in the direction indicated to the driver by Contini.  The cab entered a sort of broad lane, the sketch of a future street, rough with the unrolled metalling of broken stones, the space set apart for the pavement being an uneven path of trodden brown earth.  Here and there tall detached houses rose out of the wilderness, mostly covered by scaffoldings and swarming with workmen, but hideous where so far finished as to be visible in all the isolation of their six-storied nakedness.  A strong smell of lime, wet earth and damp masonry was blown into Orsino’s nostrils by the scirocco wind.  Contini stopped the cab before an unpromising and deserted erection of poles, boards and tattered matting.