“How long will all that take?  A month or two?”

“About a week.  It will be a little fresh, but if you are not rheumatic, Signor Principe, we can try it.”

“I am not rheumatic,” laughed Orsino, who was pleased with the idea of having his office on the spot, and apparently in the midst of a wilderness.  “And I suppose you really do understand architecture, Signor Contini, though you do play the fiddle.”

In this exceedingly sketchy way was the firm of Andrea Contini and Company established and lodged, being at the time in a very shadowy state, theoretically and practically, though it was destined to play a more prominent part in affairs than either of the young partners anticipated.  Orsino discovered before long that his partner was a man of skill and energy, and his spirits rose by degrees as the work began to advance.  Contini was restless, untiring and gifted, such a character as Orsino had not yet met in his limited experience of the world.  The man seemed to understand his business to the smallest details and could show the workmen how to mix mortar in the right proportions, or how to strengthen a scaffolding at the weak point much better than the overseer or the master builder.  At the books he seemed to be infallible, and he possessed, moreover, such a power of stating things clearly and neatly that Orsino actually learnt from him in a few weeks what he would have needed six months to learn anywhere else.  As soon as the first dread of failure wore off, Orsino discovered that he was happier than he had ever been in the course of his life before.  What he did was not, indeed, of much use in the progress of the office work and rather hindered than helped Contini, who was obliged to do everything slowly and sometimes twice over in order to make his pupil understand; but Orsino had a clear and practical mind, and did not forget what he had learned once.  An odd sort of friendship sprang up between the two men, who under ordinary circumstances would never have met, or known each other by sight.  The one had expected to find in his partner an overbearing, ignorant patrician; the other had supposed that his companion would turn out a vulgar, sordid, half-educated builder.  Both were equally surprised when each discovered the truth about the other.

Though Orsino was reticent by nature, he took no especial pains to conceal his goings and comings, but as his occupation took him out of the ordinary beat followed by his idle friends, it was a long time before any of them discovered that he was engaged in practical business.  In his own home he was not questioned, and he said nothing.  The Saracinesca were considered eccentric, but no one interfered with them nor ventured to offer them suggestions.  If they chose to allow their heir absolute liberty of action, merely because he had passed his twenty-first birthday, it was their own concern, and his ruin would be upon their own heads.  No one cared to risk a savage retort from