t that Giovanni Saracinesca had any intention of repressing his
son's energetic instincts, and he assuredly had no idea of the effect
his words often produced. He sometimes wondered at the sudden silence
which came over the young man after such conversations, but he did not
understand it and on the whole paid little attention to it. He
remembered that he himself had been different, and had been wont to
argue hotly and not unfrequently to quarrel with his father about
trifles. He himself had been headstrong, passionate, often intractable
in his early youth, and his father had been no better at sixty and was
little improved in that respect even at his present great age. But
Orsino did not argue. He suggested, and if any one disagreed with him he
became silent. He seemed to possess energy in action, and a number of
rather fantastic aspirations, but in conversation he was easily silenced
and in outward manner he would have seemed too yielding if he had not
often seemed too cold.

Giovanni did not see that Orsino was most like his mother in character,
while the contact with a new generation had given him something
unfamiliar to the old, an affectation at first, but one which habit was
amalgamating with the real nature beneath.

No doubt, it was wise and right to discourage ideas which would tend in
any way to revolution. Giovanni had seen revolutions and had been the
loser by them. It was not wise and was certainly not necessary to throw
cold water on the young fellow's harmless aspirations. But Giovanni had
lived for many years in his own way, rich, respected and supremely
happy, and he believed that his way was good enough for Orsino. He had,
in his youth, tried most things for himself, and had found them failures
so far as happiness was concerned. Orsino might make the series of
experiments in his turn if he pleased, but there was no adequate reason
for such an expenditure of energy. The sooner the boy loved some girl
who would make him a good wife, and the sooner he married her, the
sooner he would find that calm, satisfactory existence which had not
finally come to Giovanni until after thirty years of age.

As for the question of fortune, it was true that there were four sons,
but there was Giovanni's mother's fortune, there was Corona's fortune,
and there was the great Saracinesca estate behind both. They were all so
extremely rich that the deluge must be very distant.

Orsino understood none of these things. He onl