llions. You do not understand?
Will you try to read my explanation?"

And here Orsino summed up his position towards Del Ferice in a clear and
succinct statement, which it is not necessary to reproduce here. It
needed no talent for business on Maria Consuelo's part to understand
that he was bound hand and foot.

"One of three things must happen" (Orsino continued). "I must
cripple, if not ruin, the fortune of my family, or I must go
through a scandalous bankruptcy, or I must continue to be Ugo Del
Ferice's servant during the best years of my life. My only
consolation is that I am unpaid. I do not speak of poor Contini. He
is making a reputation, it is true, and Del Ferice gives him
something which I increase as much as I can. Considering our
positions, he is the more completely sacrificed of the two, poor
fellow--and through my fault. If I had only had the courage to put
my vanity out of the way eighteen months ago, I might have saved
him as well as myself. I believed myself a match for Del
Ferice--and I neither was nor ever shall be. I am a little
desperate.

"That is my life, my dear friend. Since you have not quite
forgotten me, write me a word of that good old sympathy on which I
lived so long. It may soon be all I have to live on. If Del Ferice
should have the bad taste to follow Donna Tullia to Saint
Lawrence's, nothing could save me. I should no longer have the
alternative of remaining his slave in exchange for safety from
bankruptcy to myself and ruin--or something like it--to my father.

"But let us talk no more about it all. But for your kindly letter,
no one would ever have known all this, except Contini. In your calm
Egyptian life--thank God, dear, that your life is calm!--my story
must sound like a fragment from an unpleasant dream. One thing you
do not tell me. Are you happy, as well as peaceful? I would like to
know. I am not.

"Pray write again, when you have time--and inclination. If there is
anything to be done for you in Rome--any little thing, or great
thing either--command your old friend,

"ORSINO SARACINESCA."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Orsino posted his letter with an odd sensation of relief. He felt that
he was once more in communication with humanity, since he had been able
to speak out and tell some one of the troubles that oppres