ntention of going to
England, and roughly refused to be accompanied by any one of the family.
He wanted to find out some old friends, he said, and desired the
satisfaction of spending a couple of months in peace, which was quite
impossible at home, owing to Giovanni's outrageous temper and Orsino's
craze for business. He thereupon embraced them all affectionately,
indulged in a hearty laugh and departed in a special carriage with his
own servants.

Giovanni objected to Orsino's staying in Rome during the great heat.
Though Orsino had not as yet entered into any explanation with his
father, but the latter understood well enough that the business had
turned out better than had been expected and began to feel an interest
in its further success, for his son's sake. He saw the boy developing
into a man by a process which he would naturally have supposed to be the
worst possible one, judging from his own point of view. But he could not
find fault with the result. There was no disputing the mental
superiority of the Orsino of July over the Orsino of the preceding
January. Whatever the sensation which Giovanni experienced as he
contemplated the growing change, it was not one of anxiety nor of
disappointment. But he had a Roman's well-founded prejudice against
spending August and September in town. His objections gave rise to some
discussion, in which Corona joined.

Orsino enlarged upon the necessity of attending in person to the
execution of his contracts. Giovanni suggested that he should find some
trustworthy person to take his place. Corona was in favour of a
compromise. It would be easy, she said, for Orsino to spend two or three
days of every week in Rome and the remainder in the country with his
father and mother. They were all three quite right according to their
own views, and they all three knew it. Moreover they were all three very
obstinate people. The consequence was that Orsino, who was in
possession, so to say, since the other two were trying to make him
change his mind, got the best of the argument, and won his first pitched
battle. Not that there was any apparent hostility, or that any of the
three spoke hotly or loudly. They were none of them like old
Saracinesca, whose feats of argumentation were vehement, eccentric and
fiery as his own nature. They talked with apparent calm through a long
summer's afternoon, and the vanquished retired with a fairly good grace,
leaving Orsino master of the field. But on tha