Corona believed that she had found the best way out of the difficulty, and Orsino seemed satisfied, for he nodded thoughtfully and said nothing.  The day had been filled with argument and discussion about his determination to stay in town, and he was weary of the perpetual question and answer.  He knew his mother well, and was willing to take her advice for the present.  She, on her part, told Giovanni what she had done, and he consented to consider the matter a little longer before interfering.  He disliked even the idea of a business relation extremely, but he feared that there was more behind the appearances of commercial fairness than either he or Orsino himself could understand.  The better Orsino succeeded, the less his father was pleased, and his suspicions were not unfounded.  He knew from San Giacinto that success was becoming uncommon, and he knew that all Orsino’s industry and energy could not have sufficed to counterbalance his inexperience.  Andrea Contini, too, had been recommended by Del Ferice, and was presumably Del Ferice’s man.

On the following day Giovanni and Corona with the three younger boys went up to Saracinesca leaving Orsino alone in the great palace, to his own considerable satisfaction.  He was well pleased with himself and especially at having carried his point.  At his age, and with his constitution, the heat was a matter of supreme indifference to him, and he looked forward with delight to a summer of uninterrupted work in the not uncongenial society of Andrea Contini.  As for the work itself, it was beginning to have a sort of fascination for him as he understood it better.  The love of building, the passion for stone and brick and mortar, is inherent in some natures, and is capable of growing into a mania little short of actual insanity.  Orsino began to ask himself seriously whether it were too late to study architecture as a profession and in the meanwhile he learned more of it in practice from Contini than he could have acquired in twice the time at any polytechnic school in Europe.

He liked Contini himself more and more as the days went by.  Hitherto he had been much inclined to judge his own countrymen from his own class.  He was beginning to see that he had understood little or nothing of the real Italian nature when uninfluenced by foreign blood.  The study interested and pleased him.  Only one unpleasant memory occasionally disturbed his peace of mind.  When he thought of his last meeting with Maria Consuelo he hated himself for the part he had played, though he was quite unable to account logically, upon his assumed principles, for the severity of his self-condemnation.

CHAPTER XVII.