power.  A year ago I had the possibility of freeing myself.  What do you think that chance was?  I could have gone to my grandfather and asked him to lay down a sum of money sufficient to liberate me, or I could have refused Del Ferice’s new offer and allowed myself to be declared bankrupt.  My abominable vanity stood in the way of my following either of those plans.  In less than two months I shall be placed in the same position again.  But the circumstances are changed.  The sum of money is so considerable that I would not like to ask all my family, with their three fortunes, to contribute it.  The business is enormous.  I have an establishment like a bank and Contini—­you remember Contini?—­has several assistant architects.  Moreover we stand alone.  There is no other firm of the kind left, and our failure would be a very disagreeable affair.  But so long as I remain Del Ferice’s slave, we shall not fail.  Do you know that this great and successful firm is carried on systematically without a centime of profit to the partners, and with the constant threat of a disgraceful failure, used to force me on?  Do you think that if I chose the alternative, any one would believe, or that my tyrant would let any one believe, that Orsino Saracinesca had served Ugo Del Ferice for years—­two years and a half before long—­as a sort of bondsman?  I am in a very unenviable position.  I am sure that Del Ferice made use of me at first for his own ends—­that is, to make money for him.  The magnitude of the sums which pass through my hands makes me sure that he is now backed by a powerful syndicate, probably of foreign bankers who lost money in the Roman crash, and who see a chance of getting it back through Del Ferice’s management.  It is a question of millions.  You do not understand?  Will you try to read my explanation?”

And here Orsino summed up his position towards Del Ferice in a clear and succinct statement, which it is not necessary to reproduce here.  It needed no talent for business on Maria Consuelo’s part to understand that he was bound hand and foot.

“One of three things must happen” (Orsino continued).  “I must cripple, if not ruin, the fortune of my family, or I must go through a scandalous bankruptcy, or I must continue to be Ugo Del Ferice’s servant during the best years of my life.  My only consolation is that I am unpaid.  I do not speak of poor Contini.  He is making a reputation, it is true, and Del Ferice gives him something which I increase as much as I can.  Considering our positions, he is the more completely sacrificed of the two, poor fellow—­and through my fault.  If I had only had the courage to put my vanity out of the way eighteen months ago, I might have saved him as well as myself.  I believed myself a match for Del Ferice—­and I neither was nor ever shall be.  I am a little desperate.

“That is my life, my dear friend.  Since you have not quite forgotten me, write me a word of that good old sympathy on which I lived