She moved a little, and the drooping lids lifted almost imperceptibly.

“Do not tempt me, dear one,” she said in a faint voice.  “Let me go—­let me go.”

Orsino’s dark face was close to hers now, and she could see his bright eyes.  Once she tried to look away, and could not.  Again she tried, lifting her head from the cushioned chair.  But his arm went round her neck and her cheek rested upon his shoulder.

“Go, love,” he said softly, pressing her more closely.  “Go—­let us not love each other.  It is so easy not to love.”

She looked up into his eyes again with a sudden shiver, and they both grew very pale.  For ten seconds neither spoke nor moved.  Then their lips met.

CHAPTER XXI.

When Orsino was alone that night, he asked himself more than one question which he did not find it easy to answer.  He could define, indeed, the relation in which he now stood to Maria Consuelo, for though she had ultimately refused to speak the words of a promise, he no longer doubted that she meant to be his wife and that her scruples were overcome for ever.  This was, undeniably, the most important point in the whole affair, so far as his own satisfaction was concerned, but there were others of the gravest import to be considered and elucidated before he could even weigh the probabilities of future happiness.

He had not lost his head on the present occasion, as he had formerly done when his passion had been anything but sincere.  He was perfectly conscious that Maria Consuelo was now the principal person concerned in his life and that the moment would inevitably have come, sooner or later, in which he must have told her so as he had done on this day.  He had not yielded to a sudden impulse, but to a steady and growing pressure from which there had been no means of escape, and which he had not sought to elude.  He was not in one of those moods of half-senseless, exuberant spirits, such as had come upon him more than once during the winter after he had been an hour in her society and had said or done something more than usually rash.  On the contrary, he was inclined to look the whole situation soberly in the face, and to doubt whether the love which dominated him might not prove a source of unhappiness to Maria Consuelo as well as to himself.  At the same time he knew that it would be useless to fight against that domination, for he knew that he was now absolutely sincere.

But the difficulties to be met and overcome were many and great.  He might have betrothed himself to almost any woman in society, widow or spinster, without anticipating one hundredth part of the opposition which he must now certainly encounter.  He was not even angry beforehand with the prejudice which would animate his father and mother, for he admitted that it was hardly a prejudice at all, and certainly not one peculiar to them, or to their class.  It would be hard to find a family, anywhere, of any