“Why will you not tell me?” asked Maria Consuelo.

“The answer involves a question which does not concern me.  The address was evidently intended to deceive me.  The person who gave it attempted to deceive me about a far graver matter, too.  Let us say no more about it.  Of course you never got the letter?”

“Of course not.”

A short silence followed which Orsino felt to be rather awkward.  Maria Consuelo looked at him suddenly.

“Did my maid tell you?” she asked.

“Yes—­since you ask me.  She met me in the corridor after my last visit and thrust the address upon me.”

“I thought so,” said Maria Consuelo.

“You have suspected her before?”

“What was the other deception?”

“That is a more serious matter.  The woman is your trusted servant.  At least you must have trusted her when you took her—­”

“That does not follow.  What did she try to make you believe?”

“It is hard to tell you.  For all I know, she may have been instructed—­you may have instructed her yourself.  One stumbles upon odd things in life, sometimes.”

“You called yourself my friend once, Don Orsino.”

“If you will let me, I will call myself so still.”

“Then, in the name of friendship, tell me what the woman said!” Maria Consuelo spoke with sudden energy, touching his arm quickly with an unconscious gesture.

“Will you believe me?”

“Are you accustomed to being doubted, that you ask?”

“No.  But this thing is very strange.”

“Do not keep me waiting—­it hurts me!”

“The woman stopped me as I was going away.  I had never spoken to her.  She knew my name.  She told me that you were—­how shall I say?—­mentally deranged.”

Maria Consuelo started and turned very pale.

“She told you that I was mad?” Her voice sank to a whisper.

“That is what she said.”

Orsino watched her narrowly.  She evidently believed him.  Then she sank back in her chair with a stifled cry of horror, covering her eyes with her hands.

“And you might have believed it!” she exclaimed.  “You might really have believed it—­you!”

The cry came from her heart and would have shown Orsino what weight she still attached to his opinion had he not himself been too suddenly and deeply interested in the principal question to pay attention to details.

“She made the statement very clearly,” he said.  “What could have been her object in the lie?”

“What object?  Ah—­if I knew that—­”

Maria Consuelo rose and paced the room, her head bent and her hands nervously clasping and unclasping.  Orsino stood by the empty fireplace, watching her.

“You will send the woman away of course?” he said, in a questioning tone.

But she shook her head and her anxiety seemed to increase.

“Is it possible that you will submit to such a thing from a servant?” he asked in astonishment.