But he saw also that the only alternative was an appeal to his father, or bankruptcy which ultimately meant the same thing.  Del Ferice spoke again.

“Whether you agree, or whether you prefer a foreclosure, we shall both lose.  But we should lose more by the latter course.  In the interests of the bank I trust that you will accept.  You see how frankly I speak about it.  In the interests of the bank.  But then, I need not remind you that it would hardly be fair to let us lose heavily when you can make the loss relatively a slight one—­considering how the bank has behaved to you, and to you alone, throughout this fatal year.”

“I will give you an answer to-morrow,” said Orsino.

He thought of poor Contini who would find that he had worked for nothing during a whole year.  But then, it would be easy for Orsino to give Contini a sum of money out of his private resources.  Anything was better than giving up the struggle and applying to his father.

CHAPTER XXVII.

Orsino was to all intents and purposes without a friend.  How far circumstances had contributed to this result and how far he himself was to blame for his lonely state, those may judge who have followed his history to this point.  His grandfather had indeed offered him help and in a way to make it acceptable if he had felt that he could accept it at all.  But the old Prince did not in the least understand the business nor the situation.  Moreover a young fellow of two or three and twenty does not look for a friend in the person of a man sixty years older than himself.  While maintaining the most uniformly good relations in his home, Orsino felt himself estranged from his father and mother.  His brothers were too young, and were generally away from home at school and college, and he had no sisters.  Beyond the walls of the Palazzo Saracinesca, San Giacinto was the only man whom he would willingly have consulted; but San Giacinto was of all men the one least inclined to intimacy with his neighbours, and, after all, as Orsino reflected, he would probably repeat the advice he had already given, if he vouchsafed counsel of any kind.

He thought of all his acquaintance and came to the conclusion that he was in reality in terms more closely approaching to friendship with Andrea Contini than with any man of his own class.  Yet he would have hesitated to call the architect his friend, as he would have found it impossible to confide in him concerning any detail of his own private life.

At a time when most young men are making friends, Orsino had been hindered, from the formation of such ties by the two great interests which had absorbed his existence, his attachment and subsequent love for Maria Consuelo, and the business at which he had worked so steadily.  He had lost Maria Consuelo, in whom he would have confided as he had often done before, and at the present important juncture he stood quite alone.