If he had been his former self, he would undoubtedly have returned to his original purpose of killing Marcello outright, since he had not succeeded in killing him by dissipation.  But his nerve was not what it had been, and the circumstances were not in his favour.  Moreover, Marcello was now of age, and had probably made a will, unknown to Corbario, in which case the fortune would no longer revert to the latter.  The risk was too great, since it would no longer be undertaken for a certainty amounting to millions.  It was better to be satisfied with the life-interest in one-third of the property, which he already enjoyed, and which supplied him with abundant means for amusing himself.

It was humiliating to be turned out of the house by a mere boy, as he still called Marcello, but he was not excessively sensitive to humiliation, and he promised himself some sort of satisfactory vengeance before long.  What surprised him most was that the first quarrel should have been about Aurora.  He had more than once said in conversation that he meant to marry the girl, and Marcello had chosen to say nothing in answer to the statement; but when Folco had gone so far as to hint that Aurora was in love with him and was about to accept him, Marcello had as good as given him the lie direct, and a few more words had led to the outbreak recorded at the beginning of this chapter.

As a matter of fact Corbario understood what had led to it better than Marcello himself, who had no very positive reason for entirely disbelieving his stepfather’s words.  The Contessa and her daughter had returned to Rome, and Corbario often went to see them, whereas Marcello had not been even once.  When Marcello had last seen Folco in the Engadine, he had left him sitting in their little room at the hotel.  Folco was not at all too old to marry Aurora; he was rich, at least for life, and Aurora was poor; he was good-looking, accomplished, and ready with his tongue.  It was by no means impossible that he might make an impression on the girl and ultimately win her.  Besides, Marcello felt that odd little resentment against Aurora which very young men sometimes feel against young girls, whom they have thought they loved, or are really about to love, or are afraid of loving, which makes them rude, or unjust, or both, towards those perhaps quite unconscious maidens, and which no woman can ever understand.

“My dear Harry, why will you be so disagreeable to Mary?” asks the wondering mother.  “She is such a charming girl, and only the other day she was saying that you are such a nice boy!”

“Humph!” snorts Harry rudely, and forthwith lights his pipe and goes off to the stables to growl in peace, or across country, or to his boat, or to any other heavenly place not infested by women.

There had been moments when, in his heart, Marcello had almost said that it would serve Aurora right to be married to Corbario; yet at the first hint from the latter that she was at all in danger of such a fate, Marcello had broken out as if the girl’s good name had been attacked, and had turned his stepfather out of the house in a very summary fashion.