lly
executed contract, and besides taking it for granted that the existing
mortgages only just covered the value of the buildings. If, as was
probable, Del Ferice had means of either selling or letting the houses,
he stood to make an enormous profit. He saw, too, that if he accepted
now, he must in all likelihood be driven to accept similar conditions on
a future occasion, and that he would be binding Andrea Contini and
himself to work, and to work hard, for nothing and perhaps during years.

But he saw also that the only alternative was an appeal to his father,
or bankruptcy which ultimately meant the same thing. Del Ferice spoke
again.

"Whether you agree, or whether you prefer a foreclosure, we shall both
lose. But we should lose more by the latter course. In the interests of
the bank I trust that you will accept. You see how frankly I speak about
it. In the interests of the bank. But then, I need not remind you that
it would hardly be fair to let us lose heavily when you can make the
loss relatively a slight one--considering how the bank has behaved to
you, and to you alone, throughout this fatal year."

"I will give you an answer to-morrow," said Orsino.

He thought of poor Contini who would find that he had worked for nothing
during a whole year. But then, it would be easy for Orsino to give
Contini a sum of money out of his private resources. Anything was better
than giving up the struggle and applying to his father.

CHAPTER XXVII.

Orsino was to all intents and purposes without a friend. How far
circumstances had contributed to this result and how far he himself was
to blame for his lonely state, those may judge who have followed his
history to this point. His grandfather had indeed offered him help and
in a way to make it acceptable if he had felt that he could accept it
at all. But the old Prince did not in the least understand the business
nor the situation. Moreover a young fellow of two or three and twenty
does not look for a friend in the person of a man sixty years older than
himself. While maintaining the most uniformly good relations in his
home, Orsino felt himself estranged from his father and mother. His
brothers were too young, and were generally away from home at school and
college, and he had no sisters. Beyond the walls of the Palazzo
Saracinesca, San Giacinto was the only man whom he would willingly have
consulted; but San Giacinto was of all men the one least inclined to
intimac