ouble before I am
here again, you should go to your father at once. He knows nothing of
business, and has been sensible enough to keep out of it. The
consequence is that he is as rich as ever, and he would sacrifice a
great deal rather than see your name dragged into the publicity of a
failure. Good-night, and good luck to you."

Thereupon the Titan shook Orsino's hand in his mighty grip and went
away. As a matter of fact he was going down to look over one of
Montevarchi's biggest estates with a view to buying it in the coming
cataclysm, but it would not have been like him to communicate the
smallest of his intentions to Orsino, or to any one, not excepting his
wife and his lawyer.

Orsino was left to his own devices and meditations. A servant came in
and inquired whether he wished to dine at home, and he ordered strong
coffee by way of a meal. He was at the age when a man expects to find a
way out of his difficulties in an artificial excitement of the nerves.

Indeed, he had enough to disturb him, for it seemed as though all
possible misfortunes had fallen upon him at once. He had suffered on the
same day the greatest shock to his heart, and the greatest blow to his
vanity which he could conceive possible. Maria Consuelo was gone and the
failure of his business was apparently inevitable. When he tried to
review the three plans which San Giacinto had suggested, he found
himself suddenly thinking of the woman he loved and making schemes for
following her; but so soon as he had transported himself in imagination
to her side and was beginning to hope that he might win her back, he
was torn away and plunged again into the whirlpool of business at home,
struggling with unheard of difficulties and sinking deeper at every
stroke.

A hundred times he rose from his chair and paced the floor impatiently,
and a hundred times he threw himself down again, overcome by the
hopelessness of the situation. Occasionally he found a little comfort in
the reflexion that the night could not last for ever. When the day came
he would be driven to act, in one way or another, and he would be
obliged to consult his partner, Contini. Then at last his mind would be
able to follow one connected train of thought for a time, and he would
get rest of some kind.

Little by little, however, and long before the day dawned, the
dominating influence asserted itself above the secondary one and he was
thinking only of Maria Consuelo. Throughout all that