life, had come upon him with irresistible
force, and he had yielded to it. Then, in hours of reaction, in the
awful depression that comes with the grey dawn after a night of wine and
pleasure and play, terrible little incidents had come back to his
memory. He had recalled Kalmon's face and quiet words, and his own
weakness when he had first come to see Marcello in the hospital--that
abject terror which both Regina and the doctor must have noticed--and
his first impression that Marcello no longer trusted him as formerly,
and many other things; and each time he had been thus disturbed, he had
plunged deeper into the dissipation which alone could cloud such
memories and keep them out of sight for a time; till at last he had come
to live in a continual transition from recklessness to fear and from
fear to recklessness, and he had grown to detest the very sight of
Marcello so heartily that an open quarrel was almost a relief.

If he had been his former self, he would undoubtedly have returned to
his original purpose of killing Marcello outright, since he had not
succeeded in killing him by dissipation. But his nerve was not what it
had been, and the circumstances were not in his favour. Moreover,
Marcello was now of age, and had probably made a will, unknown to
Corbario, in which case the fortune would no longer revert to the
latter. The risk was too great, since it would no longer be undertaken
for a certainty amounting to millions. It was better to be satisfied
with the life-interest in one-third of the property, which he already
enjoyed, and which supplied him with abundant means for amusing himself.

It was humiliating to be turned out of the house by a mere boy, as he
still called Marcello, but he was not excessively sensitive to
humiliation, and he promised himself some sort of satisfactory vengeance
before long. What surprised him most was that the first quarrel should
have been about Aurora. He had more than once said in conversation that
he meant to marry the girl, and Marcello had chosen to say nothing in
answer to the statement; but when Folco had gone so far as to hint that
Aurora was in love with him and was about to accept him, Marcello had as
good as given him the lie direct, and a few more words had led to the
outbreak recorded at the beginning of this chapter.

As a matter of fact Corbario understood what had led to it better than
Marcello himself, who had no very positive reason for entirely
disbelieving