A part of the improvement would consist in a statue of Del Ferice himself—­representing him, perhaps, as he had escaped from Rome, in the garb of a Capuchin friar, but with the addition of an army revolver to show that he had fought for Italian unity, though when or where no man could tell.  But it is worth noting that while he protested his total inability to discount any one’s bills, Andrea Contini and Company regularly renewed their acceptances when due and signed new ones for any amount of cash they required.  The accommodation was accompanied with a request that it should not be mentioned.  Orsino took the money indifferently enough, conscious that he had three fortunes at his back in case of trouble, but Contini grew more nervous as time went on and the sums on paper increased in magnitude, while the chances of disposing of the buildings seemed reduced to nothing in the stagnation which had already set in.

CHAPTER XXV.

At this time Count Spicca received a letter from Maria Consuelo, written from Nice and bearing a postmark more recent than the date which headed the page, a fact which proved that the writer had either taken an unusually long time in the composition or had withheld the missive several days before finally despatching it.

“My father—­I write to inform you of certain things which have recently taken place and which it is important that you should know, and of which I should have the right to require an explanation if I chose to ask it.  Having been the author of my life, you have made yourself also the author of all my unhappiness and of all my trouble.  I have never understood the cause of your intense hatred for me, but I have felt its consequences, even at a great distance from you, and you know well enough that I return it with all my heart.  Moreover I have made up my mind that I will not be made to suffer by you any longer.  I tell you so quite frankly.  This is a declaration of war, and I will act upon it immediately.

“You are no doubt aware that Don Orsino Saracinesca has for a long time been among my intimate friends.  I will not discuss the question, whether I did well to admit him to my intimacy or not.  That, at least, does not concern you.  Even admitting your power to exercise the most complete tyranny over me in other ways, I am and have always been free to choose my own acquaintances, and I am able to defend myself better than most women, and as well as any.  I will be just, too.  I do not mean to reproach you with the consequences of what I do.  But I will not spare you where the results of your action towards me are concerned.

“Don Orsino made love to me last spring.  I loved him from the first.  I can hear your cruel laugh and see your contemptuous face as I write.  But the information is necessary, and I can bear your scorn because this is the last opportunity for such diversion which I shall afford you, and because I mean that you shall pay dearly for it.  I loved Don Orsino, and I love him still.  You, of course, have never loved.  You have hated, however, and perhaps one passion may be the measure of another.  It is in my case, I can assure you, for the better I love, the better I learn to hate you.