“I know the very man,” said Orsino promptly.

“Will you write out the address for me?”

“It is not necessary.  I mean myself.”

“I could not let you take so much trouble,” protested Maria Consuelo.

But she accepted, nevertheless, after a little hesitation.  For some time they discussed the relative advantages of the various habitable quarters of the city, both glad, perhaps, to find an almost indifferent subject of conversation, and both relatively happy merely in being together.  The talk made one of those restful interludes which are so necessary, and often so hard to produce, between two people whose thoughts run upon a strong common interest, and who find it difficult to exchange half a dozen words without being led back to the absorbing topic.

What had been said had produced a decided effect upon Orsino.  He had come expecting to take up the acquaintance on a new footing, but ten minutes had not elapsed before he had found himself as much interested as ever in Maria Consuelo’s personality, and far more interested in her life than he had ever been before.  While talking with more or less indifference about the chances of securing a suitable apartment for the winter, Orsino listened with an odd sensation of pleasure to every tone of his companion’s voice and watched every changing expression of the striking face.  He wondered whether he were not perhaps destined to love her sincerely as he had already loved her in a boyish, capricious fashion which would no longer be natural to him now.  But for the present he was sure that he did not love her, and that he desired nothing but her sympathy for himself, and to feel sympathy for her.  Those were the words he used, and he did not explain them to his own intelligence in any very definite way.  He was conscious, indeed, that they meant more than formerly, but the same was true of almost everything that came into his life, and he did not therefore attach any especial importance to the fact.  He was altogether much more in earnest than when he had first met Maria Consuelo; he was capable of deeper feeling, of stronger determination and of more decided action in all matters, and though he did not say so to himself he was none the less aware of the change.

“Shall we make an appointment for to-morrow?” he asked, after they had been talking some time.

“Yes—­but there is one thing I wanted to ask you—­”

“What is that?” inquired Orsino, seeing that she hesitated.

The faint colour rose in her cheeks, but she looked straight into his eyes, with a kind of fearless expression, as though she were facing a danger.

“Tell me,” she said, “in Rome, where everything is known and every one talks so much, will it not be thought strange that you and I should be driving about together, looking for a house for me?  Tell me the truth.”

“What can people say?” asked Orsino.

“Many things.  Will they say them?”