morality. But that
is not the question. I wish to know, from you since he does not confide
in me, how far he is really succeeding."

Corona gave her husband a remarkably clear statement of Orsino's
affairs, without exaggeration so far as the facts were concerned, but
not without highly favourable comment. She did not attempt to conceal
her triumph, now that success had been in a measure attained, and she
did not hesitate to tell Giovanni that he ought to have encouraged and
supported the boy from the first.

Giovanni listened with very great interest, and bore her affectionate
reproaches with equanimity. He felt in his heart that he had done right,
and he somehow still believed that things were not in reality all that
they seemed to be. There was something in Orsino's immediate success
against odds apparently heavy, which disturbed his judgment. He had not,
it was true, any personal experience of the building speculations in the
city, nor of financial transactions in general, as at present
understood, and he had recently heard of cases in which individuals had
succeeded beyond their own wildest expectations. There was, perhaps, no
reason why Orsino should not do as well as other people, or even better,
in spite of his extreme youth. Andrea Contini was probably a man of
superior talent, well able to have directed the whole affair alone, if
other circumstances had been favourable to him, and there was on the
whole nothing to prove that the two young men had received more than
their fair share of assistance or accommodation from the bank. But
Giovanni knew well enough that Del Ferice was the most influential
personage in the bank in question, and the mere suggestion of his name
lent to the whole affair a suspicious quality which disturbed Orsino's
father. In spite of all reasonable reflexions there was an air of
unnatural good fortune in the case which he did not like, and he had
enough experience of Del Ferice's tortuous character to distrust his
intentions. He would have preferred to see his son lose money through
Ugo rather than that Orsino should owe the latter the smallest thanks.
The fact that he had not spoken with the man for over twenty years did
not increase the confidence he felt in him. In that time Del Ferice had
developed into a very important personage, having much greater power to
do harm than he had possessed in former days, and it was not to be
supposed that he had forgotten old wounds or given up all ho