At half-past five o’clock he entered the familiar little sitting-room in the hotel.  Madame d’Aranjuez was alone, cutting a new book with the jewelled knife which continued to be the only object of the kind visible in the room.  She smiled as Orsino entered, and she laid aside the volume as he sat down in his accustomed place.

“I thought you were not coming,” she said.

“Why?”

“You always come at five.  It is half-past to-day.”  Orsino looked at his watch.

“Do you notice whether I come or not?” he asked.

Maria Consuelo glanced at his face, and laughed.

“What have you been doing to-day?” she asked.  “That is much more interesting.”

“Is it?  I am afraid not.  I have been listening to those disagreeable things which are called truths by the people who say them.  I have listened to two lectures delivered by two very intelligent men for my especial benefit.  It seems to me that as soon as I make a good resolution it becomes the duty of sensible people to demonstrate that I am a fool.”

“You are not in a good humour.  Tell me all about it.”

“And weary you with my grievances?  No.  Is Del Ferice coming this afternoon?”

“How can I tell?  He does not come often.”

“I thought he came almost every day,” said Orsino gloomily.

He was disappointed, but Maria Consuelo did not understand what was the matter.  She leaned forward in her low seat, her chin resting upon one hand, and her tawny eyes fixed on Orsino’s.

“Tell me, my friend—­are you unhappy?  Can I do anything?  Will you tell me?”

It was not easy to resist the appeal.  Though the two had grown intimate of late, there had hitherto always been something cold and reserved behind her outwardly friendly manner.  To-day she seemed suddenly willing to be different.  Her easy, graceful attitude, her soft voice full of promised sympathy, above all the look in her strange eyes revealed a side of her character which Orsino had not suspected and which affected him in a way he could not have described.

Without hesitation he told her his story, from beginning to end, simply, without comment and without any of the cutting phrases which came so readily to his tongue on most occasions.  She listened very thoughtfully to the end.

“Those things are not misfortunes,” she said.  “But they may be the beginnings of unhappiness.  To be unhappy is worse than any misfortune.  What right has your father to laugh at you?  Because he never needed to do anything for himself, he thinks it absurd that his son should dislike the lazy life that is prepared for him.  It is not reasonable—­it is not kind!”

“Yet he means to be both, I suppose,” said Orsino bitterly.

“Oh, of course!  People always mean to be the soul of logic and the paragon of charity!  Especially where their own children are concerned.”

Maria Consuelo added the last words with more feeling than seemed justified by her sympathy for Orsino’s woes.  The moment was perhaps favourable for asking a leading question about herself, and her answer might have thrown light on her problematic past.  But Orsino was too busy with his own troubles to think of that, and the opportunity slipped by and was lost.