a Consuelo in a tone of alarm.

"Yes, I will. Why not? Do you know what he once said to me? He told me
he wished we might take a fancy to each other, because, as he expressed
it, we should be so well matched."

"Did he say that?" asked Maria Consuelo gravely.

"That or something to the same effect. Are you surprised? What surprises
me is that I should never have guessed the relation between you. Now
your father is a very honourable man. What he said meant something, and
when he said it he meant that our marriage would seem natural to him and
to everybody. I will go and talk to him. So much for your great reason.
As for the second you gave, it is absurd. We are of the same age, to all
intents and purposes."

"I am not twenty-three years old."

"And I am not quite two and twenty. Is that a difference? So much for
that. Take the third, which you put first. Seriously, do you think that
any intelligent being would consider you bound by such a promise? Do you
mean to say that a young girl--you were nothing more--has a right to
throw away her life out of sentiment by making a promise of that kind?
And to whom? To a man who is not her husband, and never can be, because
he is dying. To a man just not indifferent to her, to a man--"

Maria Consuelo raised herself and looked full at Orsino. Her face was
extremely pale and her eyes were suddenly dark and gleamed.

"Don Orsino, you have no right to talk to me in that way. I loved
him--no one knows how I loved him!"

There was no mistaking the tone and the look. Orsino felt again and more
strongly, the chill and the pain he had felt before. He was silent for
a moment. Maria Consuelo looked at him a second longer, and then let her
head fall back upon the cushion. But the expression which had come into
her face did not change at once.

"Forgive me," said Orsino after a pause. "I had not quite understood.
The only imaginable reason which could make our marriage impossible
would be that. If you loved him so well--if you loved him in such a way
as to prevent you from loving me as I love you--why then, you may be
right after all."

In the silence which followed, he turned his face away and gazed at the
window. He had spoken quietly enough and his expression, strange to say,
was calm and thoughtful. It is not always easy for a woman to understand
a man, for men soon learn to conceal what hurts them but take little
trouble to hide their happiness, if they are honest. A man more of