"

"You called yourself my friend once, Don Orsino."

"If you will let me, I will call myself so still."

"Then, in the name of friendship, tell me what the woman said!" Maria
Consuelo spoke with sudden energy, touching his arm quickly with an
unconscious gesture.

"Will you believe me?"

"Are you accustomed to being doubted, that you ask?"

"No. But this thing is very strange."

"Do not keep me waiting--it hurts me!"

"The woman stopped me as I was going away. I had never spoken to her.
She knew my name. She told me that you were--how shall I say?--mentally
deranged."

Maria Consuelo started and turned very pale.

"She told you that I was mad?" Her voice sank to a whisper.

"That is what she said."

Orsino watched her narrowly. She evidently believed him. Then she sank
back in her chair with a stifled cry of horror, covering her eyes with
her hands.

"And you might have believed it!" she exclaimed. "You might really have
believed it--you!"

The cry came from her heart and would have shown Orsino what weight she
still attached to his opinion had he not himself been too suddenly and
deeply interested in the principal question to pay attention to details.

"She made the statement very clearly," he said. "What could have been
her object in the lie?"

"What object? Ah--if I knew that--"

Maria Consuelo rose and paced the room, her head bent and her hands
nervously clasping and unclasping. Orsino stood by the empty fireplace,
watching her.

"You will send the woman away of course?" he said, in a questioning
tone.

But she shook her head and her anxiety seemed to increase.

"Is it possible that you will submit to such a thing from a servant?" he
asked in astonishment.

"I have submitted to much," she answered in a low voice.

"The inevitable, of course. But to keep a maid whom you can turn away at
any moment--"

"Yes--but can I?" She stopped and looked at him. "Oh, if I only
could--if you knew how I hate the woman--"

"But then--"

"Yes?"

"Do you mean to tell me that you are in some way in her power, so that
you are bound to keep her always?"

Maria Consuelo hesitated a moment.

"Are you in her power?" asked Orsino a second time. He did not like the
idea and his black brows bent themselves rather angrily.

"No--not directly. She is imposed upon me."

"By circumstances?"

"No, again. By a person who has the power to impose much upon me--but
this! Oh this is almost too much! To be ca