“No,” answered Spicca.  “That is quite true, and I see no necessity for telling you either.  But, as you say, you have some right to ask.  I will tell you this much.  There is nothing in the circumstances of her birth which could hinder her marriage into any honourable family.  Does that satisfy you?”

Orsino saw that whether he were satisfied or not he was to get no further information for the present.  He might believe Spicca’s statement or not, as he pleased, but he knew that whatever the peculiarities of the melancholy old duellist’s character might be, he never took the trouble to invent a falsehood and was as ready as ever to support his words.  On this occasion no one could have doubted him, for there was an unusual ring of sincere feeling in what he said.  Orsino could not help wondering what the tie between him and Madame d’Aranjuez could be, for it evidently had the power to make Spicca submit without complaint to something worse than ordinary unkindness and to make him defend on all occasions the name and character of the woman who treated him so harshly.  It must be a very close bond, Orsino thought.  Spicca acted very much like a man who loves very sincerely and quite hopelessly.  There was something very sad in the idea that he perhaps loved Maria Consuelo, at his age, broken down as he was, and old before his time.  The contrast between them was so great that it must have been grotesque if it had not been pathetic.

Little more passed between the two men on that day, before they separated.  To Spicca, Orsino seemed indifferent, and the older man’s reticence after his sudden outburst did not tend to prolong the meeting.

Orsino went in search of Contini and explained what was needed of him.  He was to make a brief list of desirable apartments to let and was to accompany Madame d’Aranjuez on the following morning in order to see them.

Contini was delighted and set out about the work at once.  Perhaps he secretly hoped that the lady might be induced to take a part of one of the new houses, but the idea had nothing to do with his satisfaction.  He was to spend several hours in the sole society of a lady, of a genuine lady who was, moreover, young and beautiful.  He read the little morning paper too assiduously not to have noticed the name and pondered over the descriptions of Madame d’Aranjuez on the many occasions when she had been mentioned by the reporters during the previous year.  He was too young and too thoroughly Italian not to appreciate the good fortune which now fell into his way, and he promised himself a morning of uninterrupted enjoyment.  He wondered whether the lady could be induced, by excessive fatigue and thirst to accept a water ice at Nazzari’s, and he planned his list of apartments in such a way as to bring her to the neighbourhood of the Piazza di Spogna at an hour when the proposition, might seem most agreeable and natural.

Orsino stayed in the office during the hot September morning, busying himself with the endless details of which he was now master, and thinking from time to time of Maria Consuelo.  He intended to go and see her in the afternoon, and he, like Contini, planned what he should do and say.  But his plans were all unsatisfactory, and once he found himself staring at the blank wall opposite his table in a state of idle abstraction long unfamiliar to him.