me.  She says I remind her of her daughter, the poor young Princess Marie, who died nearly thirty years ago.  In Nice, too, like her father, poor girl.  She was only just nineteen, and very beautiful they say.  I suppose the dear good old lady fancies she sees some resemblance even now, though I am so much older than her daughter was when she died.  There is the origin of our friendship—­the trivial and the tragic—­confectionery and death—­a box of candied fruits and an irreparable loss!  If there were no contrasts what would the world be?  All one or the other, I suppose.  All death, or all Kiew sweetmeats.

“I suppose you know what life in Egypt is like.  If you have not tried it yourself, your friends have and can describe it to you.  I will certainly not inflict my impressions upon your friendship.  It would be rather a severe test—­perhaps yours would not bear it, and then I should be sorry.

“Do you know?  I like to think that I have a friend in you.  I like to remember the time when you used to talk to me of all your plans—­the dear old time!  I would rather remember that than much which came afterwards.  You have forgiven me for all I did, and are glad, now, that I did it.  Yes, I can fancy your smile.  You do not see yourself, Prince Saracinesca, Prince Sant’ Ilario, Duke of Whatever-it-may-be, Lord of ever so many What-are-their-names, Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, Grandee of Spain of the First Class, Knight of Malta and Hereditary Something to the Holy See—­in short the tremendous personage you will one day be—­you do not exactly see yourself as the son-in-law of the Signora Lucrezia Ferris, proprietor of a tourist’s hotel on the Lake of Como!  Confess that the idea was an absurdity!  As for me, I will confess that I did very wrong.  Had I known all the truth on that afternoon—­do you remember the thunderstorm?  I would have saved you much, and I should have saved myself—­well—­something.  But we have better things to do than to run after shadows.  Perhaps it is as well not even to think of them.  It is all over now.  Whatever you may think of it all, forgive your old friend,

     Maria Consuelo d’A.”

Orsino read the long letter to the end, and sat a while thinking over the contents.  Two points in it struck him especially.  In the first place it was not the letter of a woman who wished to call back a man she had dismissed.  There was no sentiment in it, or next to none.  She professed herself contented in her life, if not happy, and in one sentence she brought before him the enormous absurdity of the marriage he had once contemplated.  He had more than once been ashamed of not making some further direct effort to win her again.  He was now suddenly conscious of the great influence which her first letter, containing the statement of her parentage, had really exercised over him.  Strangely enough, what she now wrote reconciled him, as it were, with himself.  It had turned out best, after all.