“When I entered business, I put my dignity in my pocket,” he answered, with a forced laugh.  “There cannot be much of it in business, at the best.”

His mother’s black eyes seemed to grow blacker, and the delicate nostril quivered a little.

“If that is true, I wish you had never meddled in these affairs,” she said, proudly.  “But you talked differently last spring, and you made me see it all in another way.  You made me feel, on the contrary that in doing something for yourself, in showing that you were able to accomplish something, in asserting your independence, you were making yourself more worthy of respect—­and I have respected you accordingly.”

“Exactly,” answered Orsino, catching at the old argument.  “That is just what I wished to do.  What I said a moment since was in the way of a generality.  Business means a struggle for money, I suppose, and that, in itself, is not dignified.  But it is not dishonourable.  After all, the means may justify the end.”

“I hate that saying!” exclaimed Corona hotly.  “I wish you were free of the whole affair.”

“So do I, with all my heart!”

A short silence followed.

“If I had known all this three months ago,” Corona resumed, “I would have taken the money and given it to you, to clear yourself.  I thought you were succeeding and I have used all the funds I could gather to buy the Montevarchi’s property between us and Affile and in planting eucalyptus trees in that low land of mine where the people have suffered so much from fever.  I have nothing at my disposal unless I borrow.  Why did you not tell me the truth in the summer, Orsino?  Why have you let me imagine that you were prospering all along, when you have been and are at the point of failure?  It is too bad—­”

She broke off suddenly and clasped her hands together on her knee.

“It is only lately that business has gone so badly,” said Orsino.

“It was all wrong from the beginning!  I should never have encouraged you.  Your father was right, as he always is—­and now you must tell him so.”

But Orsino refused to go to his father, except in the last extremity.  He represented that it was better, and more dignified, since Corona insisted upon the point of dignity, to fight the battle alone so long as there was a chance of winning.  His mother, on the other hand, maintained that he should free himself at once and at any cost.  A few months earlier he could easily have persuaded her that he was right; but she seemed changed since he had parted from her, and he fancied that his father’s influence had been at work with her.  This he resented bitterly.  It must be remembered, too, that he had begun the interview with a preconceived prejudice, expecting it to turn out badly, so that he was the more ready to allow matters to take an unfavourable turn.

The result was not a decided break in his relations with his mother, but a state of things more irritating than any open difference could have been.  From that time Corona discouraged him, and never ceased to advise him to go to his father and ask frankly for enough money to clear him outright.  Orsino, on his part, obstinately refused to apply to any one for help, as long as Del Ferice continued to advance him money.