“It will turn out, as I said,” he began, when they were driving to their office in a cab after leaving the bank.  “He will let us live until we are worth eating.”

“We will arrange matters on a firmer basis before that,” answered Orsino confidently.  “Poor old Donna Tullia!  Who would have thought that she could die!  I will stop and ask for news as we pass.”

He stopped the cab before the gilded gate of the detached house.  Glancing up, he saw that the shutters were closed.  The porter came to the bars but did not show any intention of opening.

“The Signora Contessa is dead,” he said solemnly, in answer to Orsino’s inquiry.

“This morning?”

“Two hours ago.”

Orsino’s face grew grave as he left his card of condolence and turned away.  He could hardly have named a person more indifferent to him than poor Donna Tullia, but he could not help feeling an odd regret at the thought that she was gone at last with all her noisy vanity, her restless meddlesomeness and her perpetual chatter.  She had not been old either, though he called her so, and there had seemed to be still a superabundance of life in her.  There had been yet many years of rattling, useless, social life before her.  To-morrow she would have taken her last drive through Rome—­out through the gate of Saint Lawrence to the Campo Varano, there to wait many years perhaps for the pale and half sickly Ugo, of whom every one had said for years that he could not live through another twelve month with the disease of the heart which threatened him.  Of late, people had even begun to joke about Donna Tullia’s third husband.  Poor Donna Tullia!

Orsino went to his office with Contini and forced himself through the usual round of work.  Occasionally he was assailed by a mad desire to leave Rome at once, but he opposed it and would not yield.  Though his affairs had gone well beyond his expectation the present crisis made it impossible to abandon his business, unless he could get rid of it altogether.  And this he seriously contemplated.  He knew however, or thought he knew, that Contini would be ruined without him.  His own name was the one which gave the paper its value and decided Del Ferice to continue the advances of money.  The time was past when Contini would gladly have accepted his partner’s share of the undertaking, and would even have tried to raise funds to purchase it.  To retire now would be possible only if he could provide for the final liquidation of the whole, and this he could only do by applying to his father or mother, in other words by acknowledging himself completely beaten in his struggle for independence.