year and a half earlier when he had warned Orsino of the coming danger, and he was almost displeased with himself now for having taken a step which seemed to have been unnecessary.  It was San Giacinto’s principle never to do anything unnecessary, because a useless action meant a loss of time and therefore a loss of advantage over the adversary of the moment.  San Giacinto, in different circumstances, would have made a good general—­possibly a great one; his strange life had made him a financier of a type singular and wholly different from that of the men with whom he had to deal.  He never sought to gain an advantage by a deception, but he won everything by superior foresight, imperturbable coolness, matchless rapidity of action and undaunted courage under all circumstances.  It needs higher qualities to be a good man, but no others are needed to make a successful one.  Orsino possessed something of the same rapidity and much of a similar coolness and courage, but he lacked the foresight.  It was vanity, of the most pardonable kind, indeed, but vanity nevertheless which had led him to embark upon his dangerous enterprise—­not in the determination to accomplish for the sake of accomplishing, still less in the direct desire for wealth as an ultimate object, but in the almost boyish longing to show to his own people that there was more in him than they suspected.  The gift of foresight is generally weakened by the presence of vanity, but when vanity takes its place the result is as likely to be failure as not, and depends almost directly upon chance alone.

The crisis in Orsino’s life was at hand, and what has here been finally said of his position at that time seemed necessary, as summing up the consequences to him of more than two years’ unremitting labour, during which he had become involved in affairs of enormous consequence at an age when most young men are spending their time, more profitably perhaps and certainly more agreeably, in such pleasures and pursuits as mother society provides for her half-fledged nestlings.

On the day before his final interview with Del Ferice Orsino wrote a lengthy letter to Maria Consuelo.  As she did not receive it until long afterwards it is quite unnecessary to give any account of its contents.  Some time had passed since he had heard from her and he was not sure whether or not she were still in Egypt.  But he wrote to her, nevertheless, drawing much fictitious comfort and little real advantage from the last clear statement of his difficulties.  By this time, writing to her had become a habit and he resorted to it naturally when over wearied by work and anxiety.